I once awoke in the middle of the night in excruciating pain from a kidney stone. An ambulance took me to the hospital, where morphine had to be administered before I was rushed into surgery. That was more fun than Love Comes Lately, one of the most ill-conceived films to come down the pike in a long, long time. This is the kind of film that you watch, and realize that it must have been financed by some multi-millionaire on a personal whim -- no right-thinking person would ever believe there's a profit to be made or an audience for this material. The story, which is a kind of fourth-rate hybrid of About Schmidt and Deconstructing Harry, with none of the wit, humanity or coherence of those films, revolves an 80-something geezer called Max Kohn, played by Otto Tausig. Max is a short-story writer of some reputation, who, now that he's grown old, passes his abundant free time by accepting invitations to give lectures and readings at small colleges around the country.

As Max goes about his travels, the film slips in and out of what is supposed to be his fantasy life, although his fantasies are about as exciting as a glass of Ovaltine. At one hotel he's told that the woman in the room next to him committed suicide -- wouldn't hotels want to maybe keep that info close to the vest? -- so he conjures up a staid romantic encounter between himself and this deceased woman, which goes nowhere and adds up to nothing. There's another episode in which he shacks up with the cleaning lady at a Miami motel and, in this one, I think his name is Simon. At other times he's called Harry -- the name changes are meant to cue us when we're inside his fictional world. The problem is that his imagined life is indistinguishable from his monotonous real life, which he shares with a girlfriend of about 60, played by Rhea Perlman. We're supposed to laugh at her continual suspicions of his infidelity -- get it? old people cheating on old people? -- but laughter isn't in the cards.

The direction, by Jan Schutte, is so scattershot and imprecise that it's hard to know at times whether we're supposed to be laughing with or at Max, as he stumbles in and out of his various 'adventures.' More urgently, the very notion of propping up this character as a romantic figure, charming and seducing younger women as he does throughout the picture, is patently absurd and cringe-worthy. That kind of activity, for an actor, stops being viable at some point in the actor's early 60s -- just ask Woody Allen or Warren Beatty -- and continuing on past that point of no return yields only unintentional comedy. Are we supposed to believe that Elizabeth Pena, the cleaning lady, would have a romantic liaison with a man old enough to have memories of the stock market crash of 29? Yes, I haven't forgotten that some of these scenes exist in a fantasy world, but people in their 80s don't fantasize about random sexual encounters, they fantasize about being able to sleep through the night without having to get up to pee.

This is one of those films, like North -- so rightfully hated by Roger Ebert -- which sinks itself from the word go with a completely wrong-headed premise. Since we don't believe a word of what's happening on screen, it actually becomes hard to sustain interest throughout the running time. When you're watching something that is obviously a sketch, you're always anticipating the end, and that's the feeling that predominates throughout this picture. At my screening of the film in Toronto, there were nearly as many walk-outs for this picture as there were at that infamous screening of Help Me, Eros, which ended with more than half the audience having headed for the exits. I feel obliged to point out that I have no problem with stories revolving around people in their 80s or beyond, I just don't find it interesting to see them indirectly made fun of, as I believe they are in this picture. Love Comes Lately was the first film I've ever seen from director Schutte, and I can safely say that this will be the last.