`COMMITTED' CAN'T COMMIT.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Although it never quite overcomes a severe case of the cutes, ``Committed'' boasts enough grace notes to earn a mild recommendation. The film strikes a pleasing, specific tone early - a feeling of airy obsessiveness, if you can imagine - and sustains it quite consistently. That isn't the most impressive feat a movie can accomplish, but it's no small achievement, either.

A breezy comedy about borderline psychosis, the film's title cuts both ways. Not only is Heather Graham's heroine, Joline, admirably committed to her marriage vows, at a certain point she ought to be committed for taking her idealism over the line into abject stalking.

For her first real movie starring role, Hollywood bad girl Graham (``Boogie Nights,'' ``Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,'' ``Bowfinger'') marshals a great deal of charm and well-judged amounts of kookiness. She makes Joline adorable, admirable and just the right percent of scary.

But her efforts can't quite make writer-director Lisa Krueger's difficult mixture of whimsy and pain react convincingly. It would be one thing if Joline were the only lovable loony on the screen. But everyone she encounters comes with a full package of quirks, too. This democratically allows everyone a nice actor's moment or three, but the cumulative effect is to wipe out the characters' humanity, making them comic constructs, even though Krueger and the cast's intention was clearly to make them believable individuals.

We learn early on, from both voice-over narration and Joline's actions, that she fervently believes one's word is one's bond. She'll let a bass player perform at her New York nightclub, for example, even though the rest of his band has deserted the prearranged gig, that kind of thing.

So when her husband, Carl (``Blue Streak's'' Luke Wilson), a newspaper photographer frustrated by constant food-shooting assignments and evidently a whole lot else, disappears for points unknown, Joline still goes ahead with his surprise birthday party (after all, she's invited all their friends).

Then she goes looking for him. Relentlessly, if sweetly. However, when she finally tracks the dog down to El Paso, Texas, Joline maintains her distance. From her car, she watches the desert-edge trailer he lives in for hours on end (the neighbor whose yard she parks in, a Croatian maker of arty pinatas, played by Goran Visnjic, goes to increasingly elaborate lengths to seduce her).

Not only that, she finds herself bonding with Carl's new girlfriend, Carmen (Venezuelan model Patricia Velasquez, who has good deadpan comedy instincts); their shared self-esteem issues instantly move the Mexican emigre to Joline's side of the matter. Carmen even tries to get her mystic medicine man Grampy (Alfonso Arau, the director of ``Like Water for Chocolate'') to help straighten her new pal's psyche out. Even Joline's sexy, boundaries-impaired little brother, Jay (Casey Affleck), heads west to lend moral support - as if he had any morals to work from.

There's something Krueger is trying to say here about people behaving in ritualistic ruts. Joline has vague, New Agey notions about fate and protective spells that grow more desperate as her grip starts to slip. But everyone appears to suffer some kind of circling pattern of self-frustrating behavior.

It's an interesting theme, but one that the movie is too busy being cute to satisfactorily explore.

THE FACTS

--The film: ``Committed'' (R; language, mild violence).

--The stars: Heather Graham, Luke Wilson, Casey Affleck, Patricia Velasquez, Goran Visnjic, Alfonso Arau.

--Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Lisa Krueger. Produced by Dean Silvers and Marlen Hecht. Released by Miramax Films.

--Running time: One hour, 35 minutes.

--Playing: Sunset 5, West Hollywood; AMC, Santa Monica.

--Our rating: Two and one half stars.

CAPTION(S):

photo, box

Photo: Joline (Heather Graham) doggedly pursues runaway boyfriend Luke Wilson in Lisa Krueger's ``Committed.''

Box: THE FACTS (see text)