MOVIE REVIEWS : ‘HAPPY NEW YEAR’: MODEST HOMAGE TO MATURE LOVE

“Happy New Year” (at the Beverly Center Cineplex), like its movie protagonists, appears to have so many strikes against it, success would seem remote. Inspired by Claude Lelouch’s charming, complex 1973 vintage romantic-thriller “La Bonne Annee”--and filmed more than two years ago in Florida--it subscribes to old-fashioned movie ideals and shaggy-dog storytelling.

Luckily, much in the way a bee refuses to understand it is aerodynamically unsuited to flight, “Happy New Year” quite buoyantly ignores prevailing trends. Only when this little gem of a jewel-heist movie allows contemporary convention to intrude does this gently observed mature love affair go seriously awry.

Nick (Peter Falk) and Charlie (Charles Durning) are inveterate thieves who’ve arrived in Palm Beach to knock off the local, reputedly impenetrable Harry Winston’s bijouterie . They concoct an elegant, sublime ruse. Despite some rough edges, they’re a class act.

During the course of a preliminary stakeout, Nick’s wandering eye happens upon Carolyn (Wendy Hughes), the owner of the chic antique store next door. They are brought together by a Louis XVI table and the rest is undeniable screen chemistry.

As in the earlier film, writer Nancy Dowd (using the pseudonym Warren Lane) establishes her principal characters as innately decent. Nick, who doesn’t have a $2-dollar word in his vocabulary, is simply incapable of being gauche. Conversely, Carolyn’s natural air of civility betrays just the appropriate touch of larceny to remind us of both the complexity and irony of human nature.

It’s left to actor Tom Courtenay’s unctuous, obsequious jewelry store manager to demonstrate that good manners don’t always breed noble characteristics.

But the entire affair in this vision is too devilishly simple. In his version, Lelouch (who appears briefly in the film’s opening moments) created a facile complexity to his yarn that worked to perfection. He began at the end, established an unhappy conclusion, then working backward smashed anticipations and neatly tied up the strands of the story.

Director John Avildsen eschews the audacity of the original, adhering to a dull, predictable linear rendering of events.

Happily, Falk and Hughes transcend direction. Hughes, best remembered from “Lonely Hearts,” poignantly embodies both the strength and fragility of a modern woman who works. One can’t help but believe she’s responsible in part for eliciting what has to be Falk’s warmest and most charismatic performance. You’d think he’d been playing suave, urbane roles all his life.

“Happy New Year” is a modest celebration. Its disarming perspective of romance is regrettably saddled with conventional direction that allows the story to simply run out of steam.