'Just Wright' is a winning effort

As Cinderella stories go - and they usually go exactly where you expect -

Just Wright

, starring Queen Latifah and Common, is surprisingly amiable fare. Sure, we can see the end unfolding practically before the opening titles are over. But while there's plenty of misspent passion and heartbreak along the way, everybody behaves so nicely and politely that you can't help but feel good about the state of humankind.

Especially one human who dwells in a Manhattan mansion, pulling down the multimillion-dollar salary of an NBA all-star. That would be Common's Scott McKnight, a power forward with the New Jersey Nets, who, despite his tony real estate, his luxury SUV, and his celebrity status, is a proper gentleman who keeps close to his mom (Phylicia Rashad) and who pumps his own gas.

Or tries to: The car is so new, McKnight can't figure out how to access the gas tank. But as fate - and Michael Elliot's screenplay - would have it, Leslie Wright (Latifah), a physical therapist who's filling up her battered old Mustang at the adjacent pump, is there to help.

So begins an unlikely friendship.

An unlikely friendship that turns professional when McKnight tears a ligament in his knee and hires Wright to oversee his rehabilitation. With a shared love of basketball, jazz, and Joni Mitchell, the likelihood of a romantic relationship looms, too, but then Morgan (Paula Patton) enters the picture: She's Leslie's girlfriend, and her roommate in a Victorian fixer-upper across the Hudson from New York. And Morgan, cunning and va-va-va-voom-y, is determined to marry an NBA star.

The plus-size Leslie is accustomed to rejection - a couple of computer-dating dinner scenes have already established that. How can she compete with the shrewd and assured, sexy and sinuous Morgan? And how can McKnight resist?

Smartly directed by music video veteran Sanaa Hamri, Just Wright treats its characters - even Patton's unapologetic gold-digger - with respect. For all its fairy tale predictability, this is a grown-up movie with grown-up characters struggling with issues of friendship and fidelity, status and stardom, love and, yes, basketball.

As for the latter, Common - the hip-hop artist and occasional film actor, taking his first stab at a leading role - acquits himself convincingly as a basketball pro. Both in the film's game montages, and in his off-court demeanor, you buy this guy.

Latifah, one of the producers on the project, shines as an intelligent, funny, vulnerable woman whose sense of self-esteem isn't quite where the rest of her is yet. The actress' spirit anchors the film.

Just Wright takes a breathless detour to Philadelphia in its final minutes, and the way McKnight gets there - via the guest chair of an ESPN interview show - may produce as many guffaws as sobs.

But that works. Laughter and tears, what more can you want from a romantic comedy?

Directed by Sanaa Hamri. With Queen Latifah, Common and Paula Patton. Distributed by Fox Searchlight.

Running time: 1 hour, 51 mins.

Parent's guide: PG (profanity, adult themes)

Playing at: area theatersEndText