It's a bouncy, occasionally awkward diversion with sharply written characters and good actors.

A clunky script that reduces the characters to one-dimensional stereotypes.

If Tony Vitale's Kiss Me, Guido isn't quite the laff riot its trailer suggests, it nonetheless abounds in good-hearted humor, adding up to a perfectly pleasant summer diversion.

A bright, snappy culture-clash farce in the mode of "Desperately Seeking Susan" and its ilk, Kiss Me, Guido plays gay and Italian-American stereotypes against one another to good-natured, crowd-pleasing results.

Manages to have playful comic ingenuity of its own.

If writer-director Tony Vitale ladles on the cliches with extra sauce, Guido still has a hey-Ma-I'm-makin'-a-movie enthusiasm that's more infectious than it has a right to be.

A movie with a lot of funny one-liners, but no place to go with them.

Neither offensive nor inspired.

The film's biggest shortcoming is that its caricatured strokes aren't broad enough; it lacks the slam-bang energy of the comically grotesque.

Clumsy and amateurish. But it's also occasionally quite charming, and ultimately more commendable for what it ISN'T than worthy of censure for being nothing more than an inconsequential comedy.

If spelling out stereotypes were inherently funny the movie would be a hoot.

That crack in Vitale's storytelling foundation would be forgivable if the writing, acting and character epiphanies . . . well, existed. As it is, not even Scotti's formidable lips can blow life into this stillborn flick.