Who's in it? Ursula Burton, Shirley Jones, Frank Gorshin, Jill Eikenberry and a host of other veteran character actors

You might like it if you liked: "The Amati Girls," "Wide Awake"

Rated PG for language and some sexual references.

Running Time: One hour, 59 minutes

            Like a homemade scarf, "Manna from Heaven" is warm, fuzzy and clearly made with love. At times it's easy to overlook the clumsiness of the way it's stitched together.

            This home-cooked feel is in no small part due to how the movie was made. Gabrielle B. Burton wrote the script, and her daughters Charity, Ursula, Jennifer, Gabrielle and Maria produced it. The last two daughters directed, and Ursula stars.

            The Burtons have recruited some formidable actors to participate, but the occasionally clever tale is only sporadically entertaining.

            The story opens in the 1950's when a struggling Buffalo, NY family receives a welcome, if bizarre, windfall. The door of a van accidentally pops opens, spilling thousands of dollars on their lawn. The clan eagerly grab up the dough imagining it to be the solution to all their problems.

            Decades later, the gift has led them to only partial success. Inez (Wendie Malick from "Just Shoot Me") is a ruthlessly efficient card dealer whose love life has proved a bad gamble. Rita and Tony (Faye Grant and Harry Groener) are still sore about devoting their lives to ballroom dancing and having only second place finishes to show for it. Rita's mother Helen (Cloris Leachman) is equally bitter about having to raise their daughter while the couple danced away.

They may actually be better off than Bunny and Ed (Shirley Jones and Frank Gorshin). The couple have squandered their bounty on confidence schemes that have managed bamboozle both their victims and themselves.

A few from the clan have actually done nicely. Dottie (Jill Eikenberry) has her own beauty shop, and Theresa (Ursula Burton) is a somewhat overly enthusiastic nun.

The origin of the family "fortune" still bothers Theresa, so she convinces the rest of her relatives to earn money to "repay" the loan from God. At first they resist, but gradually they adopt a variety of questionable plans including a car raffle, a bogus charity and a dance contest that Rita and Tony are more than likely to win.

Some of the schemes are mildly amusing (Helen's "Grannies in Need" seems amusingly suspicious), but there's rarely a sense of irony about bilking money for the Lord. Had the Burtons explored this angle a little more, "Manna from Heaven" might have been a lot funnier and a good deal more rewarding. Instead, the quest seems silly.

"Manna from Heaven" does have a consistently agreeable tone and an affectionate attitude toward the characters, but it feels longer than it's two hour running time because little of consequence seems to happen. The anti-climactic dance contest doesn't help.

Jones and Gorshin are appropriately slick and might have fared better if the film zeroed in exclusively on their characters. In some ways, the large ensemble cast feels squandered because talented performers like Seymor Cassel, Shelley Duvall, Austin Pendleton ("A Beautiful Mind") and Oscar-winner Louise Fletcher barely get a chance to register. 

            It is commendable that Burtons want to make a film for adults that doesn't revel in bodily functions. Still "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" is also fairly chaste, and is considerably funnier. With a little more attention to logic and better sense of pacing, the love that went into "Manna from Heaven" might be more easily returned.