'You Hurt My Feelings' is a terrible title for this or any movie. And I wish that was all I had to complain about. But it's not. It's the film, specifically the writing, that left me cold.

Here's the theme. We all tell little lies to people so that they're not discouraged about themselves. Their painting is not as good as you tell them. Their novel. Their performance. That's it. That's what the film's about. And if you're saying, That's not enough to hang 90 minutes on, I'd say, You're right. This film has no center, no stakes, nothing for anyone to care about. The acting? It's as though the cast knows the truth of the previous statement.

The story. A husband tells his wife (Dreyfus) her novel's great but she then overhears him saying just the opposite. Think of 'I Love Lucy's' Lucy Ricardo hearing husband Ricky telling Fred Mertz a secret that Lucy overhears. Or misconstrues. It's a TV sit-com for goodness sake. But there's more. Another wife tells her husband his acting's good, but she knows that it's not. A son is under the impression that he's as exceptional as his parents told him he was. A shrink who does a bad job is not confronted by his patients. And on, and on, and on.

And if you're saying that it's an entertaining slice of life, I ask you, Entertaining? Entertaining? Tell me where. And when? And who? And I'll bet anything that you can't. Even if you, like the characters in the film, don't want to hurt the film-maker's feelings.

In all honesty, I left the theater still WANTING to like the movie--I mean, it's JLD!--but I just didn't. Almost nothing about it synchronized with any good review I could give it. It was flat almost entirely. The performances seemed to struggle with the writing, or vice-versa. Either way, they were all at odds.

I think the joke about the socks might summarize how I felt about the whole thing: The joke being there is a wall of socks at Paragon, and it's so...big. That's pretty much the meat of it. I did not laugh, I did not chuckle. I mostly nodded to myself and thought, Yes, I know that wall of socks, and it is kind of humorous.

If you like Julia Louis-Dreyfus or Tobias Menzies, you may find this enjoyable to watch, as both do a fine job with their roles. Otherwise, this will seem like a slow way to spend a couple hours. The plot wanders around searching for a dramatic climax or a storyline that leads somewhere. However, it doesn't get anywhere in particular. It's much like a comedy routine that just wanders from one story to another. Not too surprising, as Julia Louis-Dreyfus helped make "Seinfeld" the somewhat chaotic program it was. Funny, often, but as a movie, it leaves me wanting a more structured story.

A better title would have helped too. Something more like, "How we offend people when trying to be supportive" would have been illustrative, albeit not as pithy. The one theme that did seem to be reinforced was scenery of New York, especially as experienced by privileged people. That was interesting for about 30 minutes, but then the movie needed to deliver more message, if it had hopes of being satisfying. I rate it a 5 for the fine acting of the leading characters, but no higher for lacking a better script and story development. The result looked like It needed refining to clearly communicate a message.