Keeping the Faith
Edinburgh film festival ***

Stop me if you've heard this one, but there was a rabbi and a Catholic priest... The pitch for Keeping the Faith is creakingly obvious. What's odd is that Edward Norton, said to be one of Hollywood's tougher-minded young actors, should have chosen this amiably lightweight comedy as his directing debut.

Norton and Ben Stiller play childhood buddies who become a priest and a rabbi and get up to such ecumenical high-jinks as setting up an old folks' cross-faith karaoke centre. One day, the little girl they used to know - now a sassy exec, played by Jenna Elfman - comes to visit and turns their relationship into an awkward triangle.

Things pretty much conform to expectation, except that the script plays up the guys' irreverent hipness. We get a bit of friendly baseball, Norton staging a moody drunk fit, and Stiller working up his synagogue congregation by wheeling in a gospel choir. It may be generosity on Norton's part, but he gives Stiller all the best routines, especially in a running gag about his having to date congregants' eligible daughters. Norton himself plays it gentle, but comes across as whiny, oddly camp and altogether pallid.

The real reason to see the film is Elfman, from Ed-TV and sitcom Dharma and Greg. Something of an irritant in the past, she comes into her own here, with an abrasive, smart and sexy persona. Otherwise, Keeping the Faith is perfectly watchable - but 129 minutes for a light romantic comedy? That's a case of Hail Mary and enough already.

• At the ABC, Edinburgh (0131-623 8030), tonight.