Chuck and Buck.

Chuck and Buck * Written by Michael White * Directed by Miguel Arteta * Starring Michael White, Chris Weitz, Lupe Ontiveros * Artisan Entertainment

Some of us have Rosebuds, totemic objects that connect us to the innocence of our youth. Others have Chucks, those childhood playmates with whom we shared that innocence and--perhaps more significantly--lost it.

Anyone who has ever sighed over the pal that got away can relate to Buck, the 27-year-old misfit at the heart of Chuck and Buck. What disturbs us about Buck, however, is that he never left his childhood behind. A dweeby adolescent trapped in an adult body, he has reinvented his emotional and living environment as a living memorial to a long-extinguished camaraderie. Souvenirs and photos adorn his room; home movies flicker off the wall and in his head.

Those images take on renewed urgency when Chuck shows up at Buck's mother's funeral, fiancee in tow. Before you can say "Julia Roberts," Buck is stalking Chuck across the country to Los Angeles, angling to show his childhood friend the error of his ways and rekindle the friendship with the added enhancement of their grown-up sexuality.

Chuck and Buck is written and dominated by Freaks and Geeks's carrot-topped producer, Michael White, who immerses himself in the elfin Buck with a totality that is simultaneously awesome and embarrassing. We are initially mortified by his pursuit of the reluctant Chuck (Chris Weitz, whose stone-faced self-consciousness is just perfect), much as we were years back when a monomaniacal Robert De Niro haunted Jerry Lewis in The King of Comedy. Buck's puerile obsession is additionally nettlesome to the extent that it reinvigorates the old saw about homosexuality as arrested social development.

But Buck is such a uniquely human and engaging creation as to annihilate any attempts to freight him with Dr. Laura hoo-ha. If there's any theorist stirring in Michael White's brain, it's Bruno Bettelheim, whose seminal book The Uses of Enchantment is obliquely evoked as Buck writes and produces a fairy-tale play that exorcises his demons surrounding love and abandonment.

Buck's foray into show business sends the movie spinning off into a cannily aware send-up of L.A.'s acting fringes that Chuck and Buck director Miguel Arteta (Star Maps) would appear to know firsthand. The best news about this unexpected second act is Lupe Ontiveros, who plays a pragmatic theater manager whom Buck recruits to helm his playwriting debut. Salty and tough as an asbestos tile, Ontiveros is manna for any graying movie fan who may have been missing beloved character actress Connie Gilchrist as of late.

For a longer version of The Advocate's conversation with Michael White, go to www.advocate.com

Stuart is film critic and senior film writer at Newsday.