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'Dear God': Divine Retribution

"Dear God" is a perfect title for Garry Marshall’s new movie -- but for the wrong reason. Those are the words you’ll be muttering throughout this awful comedy. A goofy, goodwill gesture toward the U.S. Postal Service, it’s never funny and moves slower than an unaddressed letter without postage.

In the movie, a compulsive con artist called Tom Turner (Greg Kinnear) is busted and hauled before a judge, who gives him an option: Get a regular job for a year, or go to jail. Tom gets a job in the dead-letter office of the U.S. Post Office in Los Angeles, where he’s introduced to a cast of postal misfits that includes Rebecca (Laurie Metcalf), an obsessive former lawyer; Idris (Roscoe Lee Browne), an old-timer who’s counting the weeks before retirement; and Herman (Tim Conway), a former mail carrier who has been taken off his route for biting a dog. Tom, who has to sort through sealed missives addressed to the likes of Elvis, Santa Claus and God, sees his new job as an opportunity to filch what he can.

But through the kind of mishap that could only occur in a movie this stupid, Tom’s caught trying to pocket some jewelry. Before the suspicious stare of his supervisor (Hector Elizondo), Tom pretends he was sending the stuff (and accidentally, his first earnings) to some needy rent strikers who wrote God for assistance.

When Rebecca, who’s representing the tenants, discovers Tom sent the care package, she spreads the word about his pure kindness. Suddenly, Tom finds himself the unintentional leader of a secret good-guy unit among the postal workers, who try to make miracles happen for lonely, hurting souls who feel compelled to write to the Almighty.

The movie, written by Warren Leight (whose "Me and Him" went straight to video) and Ed Kaplan (who wrote the empty fluff piece, "Summerhouse"), moves along its predictable, formulaic course. Word of the postal unit’s miracle work becomes a media sensation, and Tom and company find themselves brought before the authorities for tampering with the mail. The convoluted, never-ending finale in the courtroom makes the O.J. Simpson trial seem like a momentary soundbite.

Marshall has spent his formative years in television, producing such classics as "The Odd Couple," "Happy Days," "Laverne & Shirley" and "Mork and Mindy." But with the exception of "Pretty Woman," his transition to movie-making has been less than spectacular, with such lukewarm offerings as "Frankie & Johnny," "Beaches," "Overboard" and "Nothing in Common."

After a near-lifetime of getting people to laugh and cry in their living rooms every few minutes, he seems to care only that a scene plays well. As for believability, or the roundness of his characters, well, those are details that can be trimmed. Conway comes up with the occasional funny moment. ("You’re a very paranoid person," he tells Tom. "I like that.") But this comedy is nothing more than a series of mail bombs. Marshall, who likes to switch from funny mode to poignancy, scores the tender moments with an elbow-nudging, solitary piano on the soundtrack. Tinkle, tinkle, goes the piano when we hear that heart-tugging letter from the rent strikers. Tinkle, tinkle, it goes again, as the postal workers watch a home video of a horse helping its newborn foal scramble to its feet. And with each tickling of those cheesy ivories, you understand more deeply what it is to go postal.

DEAR GOD (PG) — Contains nothing objectionable -- not counting the script.