Following the forgettable The Tic Code, writer-director-star Rob Morrow's Maze is the second feature in as many years to deal earnestly with Tourette Syndrome, an affliction commonly exploited by stand-up comics. If nothing else, both films provide a richer and more humane portrait of Tourette sufferers than comedians' staccato bursts of obscenities do, but sometimes earnestness can be its own debilitating affliction, particularly when good intentions get in the way of thornier melodrama. As a well-reputed painter/sculptor who uses his art to fight the disease, Morrow serves himself the cheeseburger deluxe of actorly roles, showing off an assortment of involuntary pops and spasms that emphasize his technique with multiple punctuation marks. But when all this virtuosity wears off, what remains is conspicuously thin and ill-imagined, a made-for-cable scenario propped up by flashy exuberance and no small amount of vanity. Morrow's first mistake was making his character an artist, the lazy screenwriter's shorthand for a sensitive and/or misunderstood genius who's intrinsically more soulful (and more attuned to soulfulness) than an ordinary person. His character's saintliness rivals even that of Craig Sheffer, as a kindhearted doctor who devotes much of his time to treating the sick in Third World countries. But Sheffer's generosity comes at the expense of longtime girlfriend Laura Linney, who turns to Morrow for companionship while Sheffer spends seven months in Burundi. Inevitably, their relationship grows more intimate when Linney discovers she's pregnant and needs to make decisions about her baby's future. Though the story turns on romantic betrayal, Morrow and co-writer Bradley White are careful to assure that all three principals are behaving nobly at all times, with not a single action motivated by selfishness or any other ugly impulse. Morrow has gone to impressive lengths to show the physical and psychological complexities of Tourette, but his character seems less human because he's granted no flaws beyond his uncontrollable tics and vulnerabilities. Ditto Linney, so superb in last year's You Can Count On Me, who's saddled with a routine role that doesn't take advantage of her unique wit and dimension. (With lines like, "Consciousness starts at conception," her cardboard heroine comes across as a walking right-to-life commercial.) Indifferently photographed and readable at every turn, Maze seems made for network television, where its flavorless melodrama and too-cute ending would seem more at home.