Falling in love with a man-ho you hired to impress your friends and loved ones - hey, it's been known to happen. Do you know how many different sitcom episodes I've seen built around the same premise?

Well, it's also the premise of "The Wedding Date," and for all those ladies who don't find the concept so far-fetched, this movie is waiting for you to drag your boyfriends to.

The implausibilities begin when neurotic New Yorker Kat Ellis (Debra Messing) shells out $6,000 for male escort Nick Mercer (Dermot Mulroney) to accompany her to London for the wedding of her half-sister (Amy Adams). Once they're there, nobody in her family catches on to their little ruse. But then again, this self-centered crew is just glad the girl has found somebody. Even her ex (Jeremy Sheffield), who's the best man and still pining for Kat, is more jealous than suspicious.

Needless to say, Kat begins to take a shine to the steely, studly man-ho. And somehow, someway, this girl and all her hang-ups begin to grow on our resident Deuce Bigalow, even making him ponder giving up the American gigolo game for good. But first, they'll have to plow through the wedding, as secrets arise, feelings get hurt and people drink way too much.

Based on a book I'm sure someone has read, "The Wedding Date," is the first mild, bland and not terribly funny romantic comedy of the new year. Even though it's built around a flimsy, practically offensive conceit, director Clare Kilner ("How to Deal") and the cast - which also includes Holland Taylor playing another boozy, passive-aggressive mom, Jack Davenport (of the BBC hit sitcom "Coupling") as the clueless groom and a scene-jacking Sarah Parish as Kat's slutty best friend - tries to make everything look cute and as inoffensive as possible.

But the more you think about "Date," the more things just don't add up. How could a woman be so hard-up that she has to invite a man-ho as a wedding date? She couldn't find a casual acquaintance or somebody? I have yet to meet a woman that desperate. And why does she need to hire a man-ho to impress these selfish wackos in the first place?But Messing and Mulroney make the best of a sitcomy situation. I always thought Messing was crazysexycool enough to break from her "Will & Grace" pack and carry a movie by herself. Unfortunately, this movie isn't what I had in mind. (If this was the late '90s, this movie would have Jennifer Aniston's name all over it.) And how could the ladies not get all heated up over the rugged, manly Mulroney? He maintains an appealing presence even when he spits out such cheesy, baffling lines to Messing as "I'd miss you even if we'd never met" and "I'd rather fight with you than fall in love with anyone else." So corny. So shameless. So effective.Anyway, they look so good together that you wouldn't mind seeing them in another movie, a better one. But for now, they are both the stars of "The Wedding Date," a movie for charming man-hos - and the women who love them.