Lesson learned, love prevails and so forth

A bland romantic comedy that comes up short on both laughs and love, “Returning Mickey Stern” stars Joseph Bologna as a regretful man who thinks he has a shot at rectifying the past. The film, written by director Michael Prywes as his thesis project at UCLA, features some less-than-magical realism, is bogged down with dialogue of the “Act your age, not your shoe size” variety, and too often plays like a student film that happens to boast some recognizable faces.

It’s unfortunate, because the basic premise, which evokes such metaphysically ripe themes as identity, coincidence, luck and fate, could have produced something much more interesting in the hands of someone like novelist Paul Auster or “The Purple Rose of Cairo”-era Woody Allen.

The story follows Mickey (Bologna), a former baseball phenom whose career and summer romance in 1950 were interrupted by the Korean War, as he is dragged back to Fire Island 50 years later by his best friend Harry (Tom Bosley). Black-and-white flashbacks of young Mickey meeting and falling in love with a slightly older, would-be medical student named Leah are intercut with the present-day arrival of Mickey and Harry on the island, accompanied by irritating narration of Harry (with faux Czech accent) detailing the events of the last half-century. These include the war, Mickey’s all-too-brief stint in the major leagues, his post-baseball career as a magician, Mickey and Leah’s late-in-life reunion and marriage, and her subsequent, tragic death. Sigh.

What follows is a supposedly magical discovery that sets Mickey to playing cupid to hook up two youngsters who just happen to look like young Leah (Kylie Delre) and his 17-year-old self (Joshua Fishbein).

Along the way lessons are learned and love -- as it always does in such movies -- prevails, but not necessarily the way Mickey planned.

-- Kevin Crust

*

“Returning Mickey Stern.” MPAA rating: PG-13, for some sexual references. Running time: One hour, 33 minutes. Exclusively at Loews Cineplex Beverly Center, Beverly Boulevard at La Cienega, L.A. (310) 652-7760