'Jack Goes Boating' is a bumpy ride

"The Town" is exceptional in that actor-turned-director Ben Affleck shows such a knack for propulsive storytelling.

Most actors, given a shot to direct, are keen to capture performance at almost any cost, bringing to the project an actor's prejudice that any movie or play is essentially a collection of expertly embodied moments.

That can result in a string of indulgent, unstrung, workshop-style vignettes that show off the actor's craft and almost nothing else. Case in point, "Jack Goes Boating."

Philip Seymour Hoffman's feature debut is an oppressively thespo-centric adaptation of an off-Broadway play about Jack, a stymied 40-something (Hoffman) whose married friends (John Ortiz, Daphne Rubin-Vega) fix him up with the limp-locked gal (Amy Ryan), who emerges as the oddball Jill to his Jack.

Against all expectations the two lonely New Yorkers hit it off, and as their relationship blossoms, we begin to see cracks and fissures in the relationship of the married couple. These problems gradually build to a full-blown crisis during a dinner party at which Jack is attempting to impress his potential soul mate.

It some ways, "Jack" is a haphazard, leisurly paced and black comedy version of "Knocked Up," a movie that kept viewers off balance by refusing to offer an enviable marriage as a model for its thrown-together romantic protagonists.

Only "Knocked Up" was up-tempo, youthful, bubbly L.A. fun, and "Jack Goes Boating" is a downbeat, claustrophobic study of problem-plagued mid-lifers living in a grungy New York that looks like a minimum security prison. Cramped apartments, barred windows, dull routines, proscribed activities.

The movie finds hope in the idea that convict Jack finds an inmate who shares his quirks and his awkwardness, and willingness to accept a dolorous existence, so long as it's not an utterly lonely one.

So you'd better enjoy the performances. There isn't a lot else to like.