One could be forgiven for having some reasonably high expectations of Sympathy for Delicious, actor Mark Ruffalo's (Zodiac, The Kids are All Right, Shutter Island) directorial debut. Ruffalo is an actor to admire, and there is a recent wave of similarly accomplished, devoted actors like Sean Penn (The Pledge, Into the Wild) and Philip Seymour Hoffman (Jack Goes Boating) stepping behind the camera on small, independent-minded productions and emerging with films that may have their imperfections but are at least reliably well-realized and interesting. But Sympathy for Delicious cannot, unfortunately, be counted among that group of worthy efforts. The film, which recounts the rise and fall of a wheelchair-bound, destitute, and angry young man who discovers that he has the ability to miraculously heal the ill and infirm with the laying on of his hands, suffers from a multitude of failings that reduce it to little more than a fairly ripe made-for-TV affair dressed up in the most superficial of "serious" indie-film accoutrements.

Dean O'Dwyer (Christopher Thornton, also the film's screenwriter and an actor memorable to all as the nephew of the Cobb salad's purported inventor on the second of season of Curb Your Enthusiasm) is a former DJ/turntable-scratcher who went by the moniker "Delicious D," but who now lives in his car on L.A.'s skid row after losing the use of his legs in an accident. Dean has a somewhat tense but cordial relationship with Father Joe (Ruffalo), a hands-on priest who tries to walk his talk by spending most of his time feeding and otherwise aiding people like Dean. One day, as Dean tries to fend off one of the aggressive, mentally ill men common to the homeless milieu, he accidentally discovers that he has, apparently out of nowhere, developed the ability to cure such ailments through the power of his touch. This is witnessed by Father Joe, whose genuine charity is not unmixed with an ambition for more grandiose, world-saving accomplishments and recognition, and he talks the chronically embittered Dean into using his healing gift to ease the suffering of those around him and, incidentally, to draw attention and positive publicity for Father Joe and his work with difficult souls on the mean streets.

At the same time, an embarrassing stab at getting back behind the turntable decks has put Dean in the path of Ariel (Juliette Lewis, Whip It), a pill-popping, hard-drinking rock musician who takes a shine to Dean and tries to get him a gig with her band, Burnt the Diphthongs. This is an even worse humiliation for Dean than the turntable incident, though, as he and his attitude problems are swiftly rejected by the band's lead singer/figurehead, "The Stain" (Orlando Bloom). However, when The Stain and the band's music-biz-phony manager/agent, Nina (Laura Linney, The Savages), become aware of Dean's gift, they come up with the scheme of incorporating it into the band's onstage gimmickry as an edgy added attraction that will separate them from the pack and push them over the top. With his ever-simmering rage fanned by his cruelly ironic inability to heal his own disability, Dean is torn between what Father Joe wants from him and his healing power and the cynical but lucrative uses to which Burnt the Diphthongs want to put it, and he finds that his amazing new ability leaves him no better equipped than before, and perhaps even less so, to face his own demons.

Sympathy for Delicious tries to encompass two worlds: that of the L.A. homeless and that of its down-and-out aspiring rock musicians. Neither come across as convincing, particularly the music world, which, as ham-handedly depicted here, seems drawn from half-true-at-best lessons learned about showbiz third-hand through tabloids and other very broad representations. "The Stain" in particular is a caricature whose cheesiness is not helped at all by Bloom's intense, shouty overacting. Only Lewis and Linney seem to have enough insight into what they are involved in to at least relax and have some fun camping it up. Ruffalo comes off all right (he has the good fortune of playing the character the least at risk for purple dialogue), but Thornton, who is in almost every scene and has to play out the most unconvincing developments and speak the most unwieldy lines, bears the brunt of his own script's lack of focus, restraint, astuteness, or effective structuring.

The plot starts off cluttered and contrived enough, and it never stops shifting into ever higher gears of ludicrousness. The visual style Ruffalo and cinematographer Chris Norr have chosen--a sort of shaky, slick and gooey-looking, oversaturated, MTV "grittiness"--is exactly wrong for what amounts to the film's surrealistic events and transitions. (David Lynch might have been able to do something with this material; the literal-minded yet tarted-up execution it gets here only serves to make it seem ridiculous, not fanciful or imaginative.) Put bluntly, this is a film whose ideas are half-baked and whose parts are meant to fit together in a way they never really manage to do. It becomes more and more painful to watch with each passing minute of screen time as this group of talented people, all of whom we have good reason to like and admire (Thortnon's brilliant Curb appearance marks one of my favorite episodes ever) are sucked irretrievably into the quicksand--or should I say the black hole?--that is Sympathy for Delicious.

THE DVD:

Although the style gone for by Ruffalo and DP Chris Norr ill fits the movie they're trying to make, it is vivid and bold, with richly lit colors and lighting that shimmers and glows--qualities that through perfectly on this high-quality AVC-MPEG4/1080p transfer, which presents the film at an aspect ratio of 1.77:1 (apparently modified from its 'scope theatrical-release ratio of 2.35:1).

As with the visuals, there is a high level of technical refinement and expertise at work in the film's sound design, and it emerges from the speakers to truly surround the viewer with crystal-clear, nicely equilibrated sound courtesy of the Dolty DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack. Whether you will really want to hear the ersatz "alternative"-type noise-rock of Burn the Diphthongs featuring Orlando Bloom's vocal stylings (let's just say that he is no Jonathan Rhys-Myers and Ewan McGregor in Velvet Goldmine) is another matter entirely.

The main point of interest in the extras--a feature-length commentary with Ruffalo, Thornton, and Bloom, and a 10-minute promo featurette for the film including snippets from interviews with each cast member--is its revelations about Ruffalo and Thornton's decades-long friendship, which encompassed Thornton's own paralyzing injury and his struggle to continue as an actor; and the details that are shared about the pair's years-long struggle to get the film made with Thornton as the lead. There is no insight whatsoever into the film's failings--anything that anyone has to say about the movie is standard-issue, mutual-admiration-society blather that probably arises naturally enough through the comradeship forged in the exhausting, skin-of-your-teeth process of low-budget filmmaking--but even though it has no ameliorating effect on the quality of the film, some knowledge of the history behind it does help to put it in a certain helpful context; we can at least acknowledge that it was a labor of love and an act of friendship, despite its artistic failure. What would have made a much better, more interesting film is a documentary or autobiographical piece about the loyalty, challenges, and perseverance of Thornton's and Ruffalo's frequently tried, rock-solid friendship; in this sense, the story we get in the disc's bonus features is actually more interesting and better told than Sympathy for Delicious itself, and it leaves us pining for the film that could have been.

The disc also includes the trailer for the film and a handful of additional trailers for other Maya Entertainment releases.

Sympathy for Delicious is one of those terrible experiences that only serves to remind the viewer of the unpleasant but demonstrable fact that no amount of good intentions, hard work, or even talent can raise the level of quality when a project misuses the talent and wastes the effort. The film has big philosophical themes and issues with which it evidently wants to grapple seriously, but it stumbles almost every step of the way, calling more attention to the awkward, underdeveloped, and over-stylized stiltedness of most of its scenes than to any ethical dilemmas or moral epiphanies the characters are supposed to be experiencing. We have ample cinematic evidence that virtually everyone involved in Sympathy for Delicious is capable of much better; here's hoping that they put this misstep behind them quickly and move on to endeavors more deserving of their gifts. Skip It.