Not only delightfully funny but unaffectedly romantic.

The film may be slight, but it is not stupid, and director Robert Cary keeps both stickiness and shtickiness at bay.

Westfeldt's screenplay and Cary's direction combine to make it the best Manhattan love story since "When Harry Met Sally."

Works its way under your skin, and then into your heart.

Isn't as sharply directed as "Jessica Stein," but it's still a formidable crowd-pleaser.

A similar blend of comedy and a grumbling skepticism about the essential goodness of human beings makes Ira & Abby feel, at times, like one of those great stage comedies of yesteryear transferred to the screen.

Though playing at times like an extended sitcom, Ira & Abby radiates a breathless charm, due in no small part to Ms. Westfeldt's sharp dialogue and engagingly unmannered performance.

To do rough justice to this special treat in not much space, let me first stipulate that it evokes any number of Woody Allen films, thanks to its therapy-centric characters and its Upper West Side milieu.

This round-robin of marital malaise has a lot more integrity than one might anticipate from its meet-cute beginnings.

It's still a mixed bag with a lot of cutesy awfulness to wade through, but the acerbic ending is enough of a punchline to suggest that Westfeldt understands what a joke this kind of film can be.

Starts off deliriously, is derailed into reality, and finally settles into something in between.

It's all too zany and madcap and Woody Allen-redux to be remotely credible, but Ira & Abby turns out to be witty and winning, in large part because of its cast.

Neurotic New Yorkers, messed up relationships, inept analysts, infidelity -- Ira & Abby has them all, and it's anything but refreshing to trudge through this well-worn territory again.

The overall effect is that of an aging vaudevillian making a good-hearted but embarrassing attempt to entertain us with stock characters and stock jokes and stock shtick.