In the real world, a woman would never ask a guy she had just met at a dinner party to move into her apartment. Even if he was gay and was about to get dumped by his boyfriend.

Well, Hollywood often has very little to do with the real world. In “The Object of My Affection,” the above scenario is the set-up of what becomes a very long and unfocused movie.

Jennifer Aniston plays social worker Nina, who gives George (Paul Rudd, the stepbrother in “Clueless”) a place to stay when he and his lover break up.

So, George moves in with Nina, and the two become best friends. They stay up all night talking about guys and eating ice cream. They take dance lessons all of a sudden for fun.

All the plot developments in this movie move along like that. They’re just clumsily announced by the dialogue. “Hey, move in with me!” “Let’s take dance lessons!” “Even though you’re gay, let’s raise a baby together!”

The father of the baby is Nina’s boyfriend, Vince. He’s played by John Pankow, probably better known to you as Cousin Ira on “Mad About You.” All I could think while watching “Object of My Affection” was “Yuck, Cousin Ira and Rachel? Yuck.”

On top of the yuck factor, the Vince character is very poorly written. Unless he was intended to be some sort of mood-swinging schizophrenic.

One moment he’s a sweet guy, the next he’s a loud mouth jerk, then he’s a happy father-to-be, immediately followed by an angry lout. Pick a personality, Sybil.

Inevitably, Nina ends up falling in love with George. George ends up falling in love with some guy named Paul.

The fatal flaw in this movie is the audience doesn’t want these two to get together. George can’t just decide to be not gay anymore. Nina needs to wake up and realize that.

The characters in this movie are almost criminally stupid. A lot dumber than anyone in the real world would be. (See above real world rule.)

Nina doesn’t figure out until almost the end of the movie the George thing isn’t going to happen. George is clueless that Nina wants him for most of the movie. Nina doesn’t figure out George is seeing someone even though he comes home late from work every day.

Not only are the main characters stupid, they aren’t very interesting. George may be friendly, artistic and neat (that’s how the movie let’s you know he’s gay because gay men in the movies are never slobs), but he is as bland as Wonder Bread. He registers a zero on the personality scale.

Why would Nina fall for such a dull guy? Well, she’s not very interesting herself. She basically mopes around, pouting for most of the film.

Some supporting roles almost save “Object of My Affection.” Alan Alda is delightfully eccentric as Nina’s publisher brother-in-law. He’s just the right amount of wacky and steals every scene he’s in.

After watching this movie, I couldn’t believe it took 10 years to write. That’s how long writer Wendy Wasserstein worked on the screenplay, adapting it from the novel of the same name. You’d think in a decade she could have come up with some interesting characters or believable dialogue.

“The Object of My Affection” ends up being merely OK. It actually starts out with some promise but really loses its focus about a third of the way through. After that, it becomes a muddled, pointless mess you’ll end up wishing would just wrap up so you can leave.

2 1/2 stars out of five

---

Mike Milik is a senior in advertising from West Des Moines.