David Searching.

Blame it on Willy Russell. Ever since Educating Rita, we've been smothered by titles with those highfalutin gerunds. Driving Miss Daisy. Deconstructing Harry. Even false ones, like Good Will Hunting, seem so full of themselves, so literary, so bloated with the suggestion of important life processes in action and lessons learned. Let's call a moratorium, shall we? No more gerunds.

They are Pissing Jan Off.

I supposed that's a rather hard-boiled way to begin discussing such a soft-boiled and likable film as David Searching, which stars Anthony Rapp (Rent's captivating lead) as a documentary filmmaker whose heart is as stalled as his career. There are few pretensions to Leslie L. Smith's first film, which was made on the proverbial shoestring and looks it. You can see every dollar that didn't go into this picture, and that's all part of its scruffy appeal.

David Searching is the latest in that ever-expanding genre of movies exploring the cozy axis between gay men and straight women. In this instance, David and his roommate, Gwen, could be the '90s version of Jack Sprat and his wife. Having gone without sex for almost two years, the diminutive David is forever ambushing visitors to his New York City apartment with his movie camera but for all his efforts can't seem to get a movie or a serious boyfriend out of it. The zaftig Gwen (Camryn Manheim), on the other hand, is barely separated from her husband before a skilled, if strange, Lothario named Walter (Joseph Fuqua) moves in for the kill.

David and Gwen bitch and moan to each other about men, refracting their romantic frustrations with a list of fantasy heroes (Batman, yes; Superman, no) who embody their elusive ideal. Once Gwen becomes distracted with Walter, it is left to another fairy godsister to jump-start David's career. She happens along in the person of comedian Julie Halston, who plays a somewhat more earnest version of herself here. We're grateful to Smith for creating a screen showcase for Halston, even as we wish he had exploited her vivacious comic gifts to the hilt, particularly in a curiously tame cabaret sequence. Mostly she is asked to dispense cappuccino and sympathy, which she does with a sincerity that makes you want her on your team as wee.

In contrast to As Good As It Gets, which presents a typically phony Hollywood version of New York City, David Searching strives so far for urban authenticity that people even get off the subway at stops closest to the actors' real-life apartments. (Perhaps it saves on cab fare to the set.) Among the cruisy locales are Central Park's Rambles and the Bijou Theater, for which -- dare I admit -- director Smith uses a mock-up for the interiors. Best of all, Smith populates his supporting cast with a galaxy of wonderful New York actors, all of whom are deserving of their own movies: John Cameron Mitchell, Kathleen Chalfant, David Drake, Stephen Spinella, LaChanze, Michael Rupert, and the divine Jenny Moreau as a bemused librarian.

For all its '90s knowingness, David Searching is oddly reminiscent of such comedies of the '60s and early '70s as Francis Ford Coppola's You're A Big Boy Now and Brian De Palma's Hi, Mom! Smith could use a little of their moxie. He favors the pallid musical interludes of that era, with the central character pushing petals on a lake and looking soulful. But the film's got more than enough cheeky wit and emotional verity to keep us content. It also has Rapp, who does winsome like nobody's business and is rapidly capturing the market on underfed documentarians who can barely pay the rent. Rubenesque women will cheer Manheim. She empowers the wide of waist, pulling them out of the dark wallflower corner and into the sunny land of the desired where they belong.