In the cliché brunch "Feast of Love," director Robert Benton explores the complex and mystical nature behind love. Unfortunately, the talented cast, including veterans Morgan Freeman ("Evan Almighty") and Fred Ward ("Sweet Home Alabama") and young up-and-comers Alexa Davalos ("The Chronicles of Riddick") and Toby Hemingway ("The Covenant"), can't get much out of the movie's muddled and shallow screenplay. Based on the novel by Charles Baxter, the film explores the spectrum of human relationships. Besides the underdeveloped lesbian couple, all the matches end up very standard. Sprinkle on some stretches of unnecessary female frontal nudity and a couple relationship twists and you've got chemistry, right? Wrong. Freeman plays a retired professor who splits his time between a coffee shop and a park bench, where he spends his time imparting his years of knowledge upon the bumbling peons of the cast. Just for once it would be nice to see Morgan Freeman as a McDonald's clerk or a DMV employee. I can just imagine that book-on-tape voice of his asking, "Would you like fries with that?" Still, Freeman plays his part with true bravado, but it's nothing we haven't seen a dozen times before. The main recipients of Freeman's advice and anecdotes are Bradley (Greg Kinnear, "Little Miss Sunshine"), the cafe’s love infatuated owner, and Chloe (Davalos), a gorgeous, young renegade who magically appears at the coffee shop just in time to fall into the arms of recovering drug addict Oscar (Hemingway). It would sound, from these descriptions, that "Feast" is full of well-developed characters with complex and emotional relationships. Unfortunately, the often too-quick screenplay results in the characters alternating between having sex and repeating the same lines describing their character flaw again and again for 102 minutes. The acting is superb, but not enough to bring any depth to the overly symbolic characters. Apparently in Portland, Ore., the perfect all-American town where "Feast" is set, couples regularly have sex in football stadiums under a meteor shower, fortune tellers give refunds, men and women fall in love immediately after being dumped, and young couples with no source of income don't need to apply for welfare because their neighbors are more than willing to pay their bills. The film does a fine job capturing moments and showing snapshots of the characters' lives within the 18-month-long timeline, but leaves the moviegoer wanting more in the end. The film gives the viewer the actions of its characters, but conveniently leaves their motivations to guess work and divine intervention. The best performances go to Freeman and Jane Alexander ("The Ring"), who play a thoroughly adorable elderly couple. The conflict caused by the death of their adult son due to a drug overdose creates the only complex relationship in the film; their interaction is only hampered by the fact that Esther (Alexander) never seems to leave the house. Bradley's character and his subsequent relationship with the ice cold Diana (Radha Mitchell, "Finding Neverland"), not to mention his acting ability, are doomed to mediocrity by his shallow character. Chloe and Oscar aren't to be ignored, but the inclusion of Oscar's drunken father (Ward) as a desperate attempt to bring their relationship from perfect to human is overly transparent. "Feast of Love" is not necessarily a bad movie. The score is above average, and it may be the ultimate date-friendly movie of the year. You will laugh (at least a couple of times), you will cry, you will get the warm fuzzies; but in a movie that emphasizes the mystical and unpredictable nature of love, the viewer knows exactly what's going to happen next all too often. Unfortunately, this "Feast" leaves the viewer hungry again in an hour. 2 1/2 stars out of 5