Director Barbra Streisand's exploration of a sexless relationship is as satisfying and stimulating as, well, a sexless relationship. Jeff Bridges sputters tediously as a stiff math professor so distracted by his powerful carnal urges that he seeks an intellectually, but not physically, attractive mate. He meets his match in a pretty-on-the-inside, junk-food-scarfing literature teacher played by Streisand with an indecisive blend of slapstick and self-pity. Exchanging nary a smooch, the pair say "I do" to marriage but "I don't" to sex for the ultimate in cerebral companionship. It doesn't take a nympho to figure out that the celibates are headed for trouble.

And so is buttah-ry Barbra's star vehicle. When not directing with a dizzying hand, Streisand indulges in shameless self-idolatry by visually caressing her mug's angles and bumps with hazy lighting. She pulls her diva strings to gather Lauren Bacall, Mimi Rogers, Brenda Vaccaro, Pierce Brosnan, George Segal, and Elle Macpherson, but each role is so cliché'd that none can save this inane study of beauty and passion. Long before the couple can decide whether to push the beds together, the film goes limp. At the Cheri, the Janus, and the Chestnut Hill and in the suburbs.