Just as the flight of the bumblebee puzzles physicists, it's tricky to figure out how Keeping the Faith manages to be entertaining as a feature film despite a premise that seems better suited for a bar joke.

Writer Stuart Blumberg and freshman director Edward Norton start the film acknowledging these unlikely origins. A drunken priest named Brian (Norton) stumbles into a tavern and proceeds to shock the bartender (Brian George) with the story of how he came to be in his disheveled, intoxicated state. Brian has had a major falling out with his best friend Jake (Ben Stiller, There's Something about Mary), who's a rabbi. Their closeness might strike some as unlikely, but the two have been buddies since childhood. They now share a similar desire to shake up their respective flocks. When his congregation has trouble remembering the seven deadly sins, Brian feigns surprise and reminds them of the Brad Pitt movie Se7en. Jake notices that the people in his synagogue perform the sacred songs joylessly, so he brings in a group of black gospel singers to show them how to perform the music properly. Their faith-with-an-attitude approach quickly gets them dubbed "The God Squad."

With all of their efforts to motivate their followers and get a community center going, romance has been dormant for both men. Brian, as a job prerequisite, has sworn off relationships, and Jake finds himself going out with some of the women who attend his synagogue merely because his followers don't trust an unmarried rabbi. For him, dating is a chore. The two men quickly find their attitudes changing when their old friend Anna (EDtv's Jenna Elfman) returns to New York from San Francisco. Anna has a nonstop energy that makes her an ideal corporate consultant. She, however, is not Jewish, which makes Jake's attraction to her problematic. In addition, she puts a spring in Brian's step and fills him with a longing he thought he had given up.

Norton and Blumberg approach their setup slowly, giving us time to get to know the characters and to make the love triangle more credible. For example, Anna's relentless schedule doesn't allow her to get out and mingle, so carousing with old friends who've entered the clergy doesn't seem so outlandish. In addition, the three leads project a believable closeness and chemistry that makes their diverse backgrounds seem less of an obstacle. Keeping the Faith also takes an interesting look at the stresses of being a man of the cloth. Both Brian and Jake have to wrestle with clerical bureaucracy and politics and often wonder if their struggles are worth the effort. They also have to explain to themselves and their occasionally skeptical followers why rigid ancient traditions are relevant to the more chaotic current age. Because Brian and Jake are presented as neither saints nor ogres, identifying with them is much easier.

Norton has made a watchable movie from a seemingly infertile concept, so it feels disappointing that he and Blumberg didn't reach a little deeper into their subject matter. The ending is too tidy and robs the film of the ambiguities that made it interesting in the first place. In addition, as both a performer and a director Norton relies a little too much on physical gags. But Keeping the Faith is worth a peek just to get a glimpse of moonlighting director Milos Forman (who supervised Norton in The People vs. Larry Flynt) as an eccentric Czech priest.

Norton hasn't worked a miracle with this one, but his first attempt behind the camera is likely to keep folks glued to their pews, I mean seats (PG-13).

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