Edward Norton is 'Keeping the Faith' in his directorial debut

Edward Norton took a number of risks with his directorial debut, "Keeping the Faith." For the most part, they have paid off in a witty and charming romantic comedy.

It was a risk to attempt a comedy at all. As light and easy as the genre might seem, the only thing easy about comedies is getting them wrong. Plus, comedy is the last thing that one would expect from Norton, whose acting resume reads about as lightly as an obituary — "American History X," "Primal Fear," "Fight Club," "The People vs. Larry Flynt."

Norton does have one comedy on that list, Woody Allen's "Everyone Says I Love You." Allen's influence is evident in "Keeping the Faith." Like classic Allen films, it is set in Manhattan and revolves around organized religion. In a climactic confession — no, not in the Catholic sense — one of the characters even reveals his tortured psyche through a series of Allen-esque stutters.

The film opens with a different confession — this one in a barroom. Norton's character, Brian, — a Catholic priest — tells the background story. He tells his sob story to a bartender after he has had a fight with his best friend Jake (Ben Stiller), a rabbi. "C'mon," replies the bartender. "A priest and a rabbi? I think I've heard this one."

Heard it we have, but usually when the third character is President Clinton or a Polish guy. This time around, the third party is the priest and the rabbi's childhood buddy, Anna (Jenna Elfman) — a childhood friend of Jake and Brian in New York until she moved away in middle school.

Brian and Jake stayed best friends in New York while studying to become leaders of their respective faiths. Now, Anna is back in town on business, and she has become as beautiful as she is successful. The trio is reunited, but this time with a whole slew of sexual dynamics that make it a love triangle. Actually, only Brian sees it as a triangle, as he is the sole party sworn to abstinence. To Jake and Anna, it is simply an affair between the two of them that they keep hidden from Brian.

Casting himself in the smaller role of Brian is an intelligent move for Norton. Stiller and Elfman need to carry this film while Norton concentrates on his role as director. The question is, do they? On their own, both give effective performances, but their chemistry is questionable.

Stiller certainly has a brilliant comedic sense. He carries off his scenes as a practicing rabbi with panache. His comedy is the Viagra of Jake's West Side synagogue. In a film marked by casual, witty humor, Stiller is also responsible for one of the only truly riotous scenes — a blind date with one of his congregants-gone-bad.

Elfman, too, is effective in a much more controlled performance than she gives as the bohemian princess of "Dharma and Greg." Without her as a believable love interest, the film would crumble. She makes her character easy to love. Still, you wonder whether Jake really does care for her. That could be a fault in the character's conception rather than in Stiller's portrayal.

"Keeping the Faith" is very much a personality-driven movie. Once those characters are introduced, it is a pleasure to spend time with their antics. So it is a bit of a problem that it takes a good 30 minutes to get to know them.

This opening half-hour could have been edited, thereby ameliorating another problem — the film's lengthy running time. At 129 minutes, "Keeping the Faith" is pushing it. No comedy should try to keep an audience for more than two hours — especially one that gives us the punch line so early on.

For the most part, though, "Keeping the Faith" keeps our attention. Granted, most of the comedy is of the quiet variety, more amusing than raucous. But it allows some well-developed humor. An ongoing game of peeping Tom contributes to the climax. A bartender's insanely diverse family tree draws attention to the cultures-at-odds in the film's central triangle. Screenwriter Stuart Blumberg, a writer for "MadTV," hits gold with a bit of random "Rainman" schtick. The film keeps the audience's attention visually as well. Norton experiments with interesting, if sometimes distracting, cinametography.

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Perhaps what is most surprising is not this movie's charm, but that it manages to win an audience while being what The Washington Post calls "the most ruggedly decent film to come along in a couple of decades." To throw that kind of movie into the theaters in this day and age is a risk itself.

Norton has an amazing sense of cinema as an actor, and he has worked with some fantastic directors. His future directorial work is sure to reflect these experiences, even if his debut does not. Let's hope he keeps the faith and risks directing again.