Grade: C-

Watching Robert Benton’s adaptation of Charles Baxter’s novel, you may well struggle to identify any character that resembles a real human being rather than a literary device, or a single situation or line of dialogue that seems remotely authentic. “Feast of Love” comes across as a melodrama, but a weirdly weightless one, delivering bromides about life and love that sound all the worse the less lighthearted and more serious they become. It’s a movie that’s half soap opera and half sitcom, but successful as neither.

The gauzy, gooey movie centers on the joys and tribulations that romance brings to three generations of residents in an Oregon city. There’s elderly academic Harry Stevenson (Morgan Freeman) and his loving wife Esther (Jane Alexander), who are nursing a painful loss, despite which Harry—though on an extended leave of absence to nurse his own grief—serves as a sort of wise counselor at the local coffee house. (Although his field is never revealed, his measured, oracular pronouncements suggest that he might be a Professor of Sententious Piffle.) Among his best customers is the owner of the joint, Bradley (Greg Kinnear), a fellow who represents the vicissitudes of love at their most extreme.

Initially he’s married—most happily, in his view—to Kathryn (Selma Blair). But she feels smothered by him, and eventually leaves him for a fellow softball player, Jenny (Stana Katic). He then falls for—and eventually marries—a realtor, Diana (Radha Mitchell), although he’s already having an affair with a married guy, David (Billy Burke), and doesn’t break it off until she’s engaged. The new couple serendipitously buys a house next door to the Stevensons, which bodes ill—as far as Esther’s concerned—because the place doesn’t have a good history.

Then there’s scruffy but handsome Oliver (Toby Hemingway), a server at Bradley’s coffee house, who takes an immediate liking to Chloe (Alexa Davalos), a struggling young thing who comes in one day and asks for a job. They’re clearly meant to be together, but there are problems. One is their slim financial resources. A second is Oliver’s father, a brute inexplicably called The Bat (Fred Ward). And a third is a reading that Chloe gets from a fortune teller, which bodes ill for their future.

“Feast of Love” is devoted to the links, linkings and unlinkings among these characters, with Harry serving as their usual point of contact and, being as observant as any academic should be, our incisive commentator. (This is yet another movie loaded down with narration, which Freeman delivers in his usual plummy tones.) Some of it is vaguely comic, but for the most part’s it’s dramatic—or, more properly, melodramatic, with tones that shift from quirky to positively tragic. Lessons are presumably supposed to be taught, though besides the idea that “life goes on” and “there’s always hope” it’s difficult to discern what they are.

Benton, abetted by editor Andrew Mondshein, keeps things moving fairly smoothly and he and cinematographer Kramer Morgenthau keep the action easy on the eye. But he doesn’t work wonders with his actors. Mitchell and Burke come off worst as the most selfish of the characters, but the smugness of Freeman and Alexander is nearly as bad, and Blair and Katic are both shrill, while Ward is simply overbearing. The best performances come from Davalos and Hemingway, simply because they appear less forced. As for Kinnear, he must be getting tired of playing the dimmest bulb on the block, but they’re no denying he’s suited to the part.

This bittersweet “Feast” will leave you hungry for some real emotional content.