Filmed in 1997, well after co-star Drew Barrymore's days as a coked-up direct-to-video teen skank but slightly before her inexplicable rise to superstardom, the stubbornly unremarkable romantic comedy Wishful Thinking concerns the romantic escapades of five city-dwellers: troubled couple James LeGros and Jennifer Beals, tomcat-about-town Eric Thal (the hunky orthodox Jew from A Stranger Among Us), Barrymore, and charming bachelor Jon Stewart. The film's one somewhat original conceit, and it's a fairly labored one at that, is integrating into a romantic comedy the elliptical, overlapping three-part structure popularized by Pulp Fiction and since used in dozens of bad direct-to-video action thrillers. It's an interesting idea, but it's not particularly successfully integrated. Much of the film focuses on the unsteady, disintegrating relationship between aspiring writer LeGros and vet's assistant Beals, which is unfortunate, since watching Beals and the bland, miscast LeGros bicker about their relationship is about as exciting as watching microscopic insects colonize. Wishful Thinking's gimmicky structure doesn't even begin to pay off until its last 20 minutes, far too late to compensate for its snooze-inducingly boring first 70. The film's sole saving grace, and it's a minor one at that, is a funny and charming performance by Stewart, who displays major romantic-leading-man potential as Beals' reluctant would-be suitor.