SEE IT FOR NICHOLSON, KEATON.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

LOVE BEING BLIND and all that, the folks responsible for ``Something's Gotta Give'' make it extremely easy to overlook their film's shortcomings.

There is so much here that you've just gotta love that, when it gets around to the stuff that you just can't, you've gotta give it slack anyway.

What's to adore? How about Diane Keaton as the smartest, sexiest middle-aged woman Hollywood has built a comedy around in years. And the jokes zero right in on the age-appropriate dating double-standard her co-star, Jack Nicholson, has been enjoying on and off movie screens for decades. Furthermore, the humor is delivered by these two sparklingly adept farceurs in meaty, insightfully intelligent chunks of director Nancy Meyers' polished-to-Tiffany-quality dialogue.

Really, for the first hour and a half of this movie, it's like we've died and been transported to a screwball heaven where Howard Hawks and Preston Sturges are still calling the shots - but with all of our modern attitudes about sex and relationships governing the eternal party.

And then it all goes flat in the stretch. And that is highly disappointing (and just the movie's largest, not its only, failing). That deflates the experience, but it doesn't erase the fact that ``Something's Gotta Give'' has the highest quotient of well-earned laughs of any romantic comedy in years.

Pretty much in standard Jack mode - which some of us like more than the strained sensitivity of an ``About Schmidt'' job, but here rarely exceeding (nor falling below) the highly proficient level - Nicholson plays self-made gazillionaire Harry Sanborn. (Missed joke opportunity: He owns a top hip-hop recording label, but you never see him interact with rappers in this very white fantasy).

Harry's never married. Nor dated a woman over 30. His latest cradle robbery, Marin (Amanda Peet, proving she can play a nice girl well), wants to consummate their relationship at her mother's Hamptons beach house.

But surprise! Mom, who is Keaton's long-divorced playwright Erica Barry, shows up at just the wrong moment with her feminist studies professor sister Zoe (Frances McDormand, who delivers a blisteringly hilarious dinner diatribe then, frustratingly, does nothing significant for the rest of the movie). Harry wants to leave. Marin still wants Harry. He reluctantly stays - to the older women's thinly veiled disapproval - and promptly has a heart attack.

Harry's hunky doctor Julian Mercer (Keanu Reeves ... yes, I know, but he is quite charming) orders the mogul to stay nearby for a few weeks while he recovers. The only possible venue is Erica's house. Left alone together, their antipathy toward one another builds in delectably barbed tension.

And when the inevitable happens, darned if we're not convinced that Harry and Erica have really gotten to know and appreciate each other, not just gone through the genre's formulaic motions. Keaton and Nicholson calibrate their growing attraction with all of the technique and blessed maturity they have at their command. And when consummation time finally arrives, well, let's just say that experience has never looked so satisfying.

Unfortunately, Harry has that commitment phobia to work through. And the lovely young doctor has the uncontrollable hots for Erica. There is no way on this troubled and magnificent planet of ours not to ``go girl!'' Erica for winning Julian's heart. But what can we say about the interplay between Jack and Diane compared to the Diane-Keanu match? The nicest thing is that it presents inarguable proof that Keaton is versatile enough to maintain her high performance standards with both the best- and the least-equipped of partners.

Meyers, who wrote for Keaton before in ``Baby Boom'' and those ``Father of the Bride'' remakes, made quite a directing splash her last time out with ``What Women Want.'' ``Something's Gotta Give'' contains her best writing ever and needed a different kind of plot structure. Directing-wise, the big achievement was in the casting.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

SOMETHING'S GOTTA GIVE - Three stars

(PG-13: sex, nudity, language)

Starring: Diane Keaton, Jack Nicholson, Keanu Reeves, Amanda Peet, Frances McDormand.

Director: Nancy Meyers.

Running time: 2 hr. 8 min.

Playing: Citywide.

In a nutshell: Some brilliant banter and sharp, snarky commentary about sex and age makes two-thirds of this a superior romantic comedy - until the last third deflates into a standard-issue one.

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Jack Nicholson and Diane Keaton make for an age-appropriate couple in ``Something's Gotta Give.''