COWED BY DIRECTION, SCRIPT.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Mad cow disease has spread from the recent, incoherent New Zealand love story ``The Price of Milk'' to the more lucid but still dithering Hollywood romantic comedy ``Someone Like You.'' Hopefully, a cure will soon be found for this bovine approach to relationship absurdities.

This film's operating gimmick, that men are like bulls who will always dump old cows for new, is hardly as entertaining as the one for ``What Women Want.'' It's still sufficiently insulting to really send those who thought the Gibson comedy was demeaning around the bend.

The ploy is also unnecessary, as it's both integrated into the plotline too late in the game and distracts from the film's great and very human strengths: the winsome performances of Ashley Judd and Hugh Jackman.

She's sweet, smart and neurotic as New York media gal Jane Goodale; think Holly Hunter in ``Broadcast News'' with more personality and crying scenes. Jane's a talent booker on a struggling chat show hosted by intense and ambitious Diane Roberts (Ellen Barkin). Another one of the showrunners, Jackman's Eddie Alden, is a piggish ladies man whom Jane can't stand.

When a new co-worker arrives in the form of Greg Kinnear's Ray Brown, however, Jane is smitten. Although he's upfront about already having a girlfriend, Ray is soon rocking Jane's world. They even plan to move in together, until Ray gets a last-minute case of cold feet after Jane has given up her apartment.

This necessitates Jane rooming with the hated Eddie ... who of course turns out to be a sensitive and decent sort between bimbo eruptions. Little of this set-up needs to be seen, but it fills out an hour or so of screen time before we get subjected to Jane's old cow/new cow theory.

Soon, her equally lonely-hearted friend Liz (Marisa Tomei), who works at a men's magazine, talks Jane into ghostwriting a column that allegedly presents the research of an elderly English scientist. The barnyard metaphor becomes a pop-psych sensation, Diane wants Jane to book the elusive, nonexistent author on her show, Eddie's hair keeps getting better and better ...

Crazy, huh? Well, frantic is more like it, which is kind of strange in the context of Elizabeth Chandler's script (which adapts Laura Zigman's novel ``Animal Husbandry'') and Tony Goldwyn's (``A Walk on the Moon'') direction, both of which definitely have their slow, aimless stretches. There's even an 11th-hour medical crisis tossed in when the real plot's wheels spin, before it zooms on to an overly busy and particularly unpersuasive climax.

There are also coy little intertitles - ``Attraction,'' ``Establishment of Intimacy,'' etc. - to reinforce the whole zoological conceit.

None of this seems needed when Judd and Jackman, who proves his ``X-Men'' Wolverine charisma was no fluke, are cranking the charm. She exhibits a previously unseen gift for physical comedy (and does a good cheerleading routine in the bargain); he goes from caddish to cuddly and back again with breakneck grace and total conviction.

As someone in the movie tells Jane well past the point when the audience will have come to the same conclusion, ``These are people, not cows!'' If the filmmakers had stuck to that rather apparent notion, they would have had a better movie.

``SOMEONE LIKE YOU''

(Rated PG-13: language, sex)

The stars: Ashley Judd, Hugh Jackman, Greg Kinnear, Marisa Tomei, Ellen Barkin.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Tony Goldwyn. Written by Elizabeth Chandler, based on Laura Zigman's novel ``Animal Husbandry.'' Produced by Lynda Obst. Released by 20th Century Fox.

Running time: One hour, 33 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Two and one half stars

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Photo: Ashley Judd and Hugh Jackman play a mismatched pair in ``Someone Like You.''