A quirky title, quirky casting (Kenneth Branagh as a losing-it LA playwright), and a collection of TV-movie subplots add up to a frustrating but not unrewarding 107 minutes in this sort-of comedy from writer/director Michael Kalesniko. Peter McGowan (Branagh) had a string of Broadway hits in the ’80s but appears to be 0-for-the-’90s. Rehearsals of his new play, with not particularly talented actors (Jonathan Schaech and Kaitlin Hopkins) and a flamboyantly gay director (David Krumholtz) whose head is filled with Petula Clark tunes, aren’t going well. No relief on the home front, either: Peter’s wife, Melanie (Robin Wright Penn), wants a child, and her mother (Lynn Redgrave), who lives with them, is dying of Alzheimer’s disease. Peter can’t even enjoy a good night’s sleep, since his neighbors’ new dog (Banjo) is a barker and somewhere out there a friendly stalker (Jared Harris) is telling everyone that he’s the real Peter McGowan. Intercut throughout is Peter’s appearance on the morning TV show amLA, where in "Debra’s Corner" Debra (Peri Gilpin, of Frasier and innumerable commercials) eventually gets confrontational.

The plot turner is the arrival of new neighbors, single mom Trina (Lucinda Jenney) and her cerebral-palsy-afflicted eight-year-old, Amy (Suzi Hofrichter). Winsome performances from Branagh and Hofrichter give some distinction to the predictable bonding between the two. But the other characters and story strands are underdeveloped, and too much of this film — like Peter’s painful prostate examination — reads like Branagh’s own midlife crisis.