New York comic artists and childhood pals Holden McNeil and Banky Edwards are signing autographs and generally looking bored at a comics convention when fellow artist Booker X introduces them to another local comic artist, Alyssa Jones. Holden takes an immediate liking to Alyssa, and eagerly accepts an invitation to join her at a local club, only to discover that she is a lesbian. Though Banky enjoys watching Holden squirm at the thought, Holden is still smitten. To complicate his life even more, Alyssa still wants to spend time with Holden in spite of his discomfort, giving him enough time to fall head over heels for her. Finally, Holden proclaims his love to a horrified Alyssa, who runs from him at first - and then admits that she feels the same way. But despite the seemingly fairy-tale turn of events in their romantic lives, Holden and Alyssa's problems have only just begun.

For me, this is The Movie That Crashed And Burned. Though I'm not fond of the genre, I am well acquainted with movies about friends who should never have crossed the line looking for a romantic relationship. When Harry Met Sally is a good example of this - it pissed me off and depressed me at times, but ultimately it was because its characters behaved in a logical and consistent manner. Chasing Amy is a good, quirky relationship movie up until the end, where it hangs a sharp left turn and dives off a cliff at 100 miles per hour.

Granted, some eyebrows may have shot up at the premise of a romantic comedy in which the object of the smitten male protagonist's affection is a lesbian (and is hence unobtainable), and I'm sure the gay community was probably equally annoyed at the relative ease with which Alyssa changed lifestyles again, but these are all fairly contemporary issues, if not potentially obvious sources of humor. I didn't have a problem with any of that.

What I had a problem with was the movie's disastrous and stupid climax, a scene in which Holden sits Banky and Alyssa down and suggests a threesome between the three of them. Up until that point, the movie was just a little bit muddled, and in places it felt like maybe it was a distillation of two or three scripts in just under two hours, but Chasing Amy would hardly be the first movie to be guilty of those crimes. The disaster of which I speak is the intelligence-insulting suggestion that Holden, a likable character who had proven himself to be extremely sensitive in such earlier scenes such as the one where he declared his love for Alyssa, would propose something so awkwardly dumb. The mere suggestion of a threesome didn't offend me in and of itself. But the idea that Holden had lost enough brain cells in the course of the story to make that suggestion bothered the hell out of me. This sudden shift in direction was pointless, and seemed disturbingly out of character for Holden considering what we had learned about him thus far. Alyssa's token - and equally out of place - "I'm not a whore" line caps off the whole ridiculous endeavor and completes the utter annihilation of whatever reserves of goodwill the audience had built up for these people.

I don't know if Kevin Smith was trying too hard to avoid a familiar ending, or if he just wanted to tittilate the audience with the mental picture of some kind of oddball sex act, but whatever he was trying to do, it quickly unraveled his story. A pity, since the rest of the movie prior to that unfortunate scene was very well done, and the performers were very believable across the board, though Joey Lauren Adams' voice becomes too squeaky at times - and in the argument scene outside the hockey rink, she becomes absolutely shrill, but I can let that pass because it's perfectly in character for the circumstances.

• screenplay by Kevin Smith
• directed by Kevin Smith
• music by David Pirner
• Cast: Ben Affleck (Holden McNeil), Joey Lauren Adams (Alyssa Jones), Jason Lee (Banky Edwards), Dwight Ewell (Hooper), Jason Mewes (Jay), Ethan Suplee (Fan), Scott Mosiert (Collector), Casey Affleck (Little Kid), Guinevere Turner (Singer), Carmen Lee (Kim), Brian O'Halloran (Executive #1), Matt Damon (Executive #2), Alexander Goebbel (Train Kid), Tony Torn (Cashier), Rebecca Waxman (Dalia), Paris Petrick (Tory), Welker White, Jane), Kelly Simpkins (Nica), John Willyung (Cohee Lundin), Tsemach Washington (Young kid in record store), Ernie O'Donnell (Bystander), Kevin Smith (Silent Bob), Kristin Mosier (Waitress), Virginia Smith (Con woman)