‘Anything’ and Everything : James L. Brooks’ first feature since 1987 has his signature of quirky comedy, great characters and smart dialogue. Though splendid in parts, it’s a disjointed whole.

Just about the first thing anyone says to struggling actor Matt Hobbs, the center of James L. Brooks’ idiosyncratic and entertaining “I’ll Do Anything,” is this heartfelt declaration from the woman who is briefly to be his wife: “Your feeling toward your work is one of the things I love most about you.”

It’s an admiration that writer-director Brooks not surprisingly shares. Because many of the traits that characterize actors, from a focus on insecurity to unapologetic emotionality and the willingness to take huge risks in front of as wide an audience as possible, can be applied to his work as well, especially to his marvelous last two films, “Terms of Endearment” and “Broadcast News.”

So it’s also no surprise that while his first feature since 1987 is in part a warm tribute to the acting profession, Brooks would hardly leave it at that. “I’ll Do Anything” is also a two-couple romantic comedy, a study of an especially prickly father-daughter relationship and a gleeful skewering of aspects of modern Hollywood. It was even at one point supposed to be a musical, but something like nine songs by Prince, one by Sinead O’Connor and choreography by Twyla Tharp got very publicly left by the wayside when test audiences balked at their inclusion.

What’s left after the music is what audiences have always responded to in Brooks’ work: the cockeyed sense of life, the daring and quirky comedy, the great torrents of words that practically explode out of the air. No one writes characters quite like this, in fact no one since Joseph L. Mankiewicz decades ago has so consistently put such smart dialogue on the screen.

But in trying to do so much, Brooks inevitably runs the risk of stumbling. His films have always been loose-limbed balancing acts, with audiences wondering whether he’ll manage to stay on the wire or not. With “I’ll Do Anything,” Brooks doesn’t actually fall off, but he does slip.

For though it includes many laugh-out-loud moments and fine and lively performances by stars Nick Nolte, Albert Brooks, Julie Kavner, Joely Richardson, Tracey Ullman and tiny dynamo Whittni Wright, this film falls short of holding together. A triumph of individual parts more than a coherent whole, “Anything” has a ragged, haphazard feel, possibly rooted in the way it was conceived, that ends in dissatisfaction despite the considerable pleasures it provides along the way.

Probably the film’s greatest pleasure is its cast of characters, all of whom (including clever cameos by Ian McKellen, Robert Joy, Harry Shearer and Rosie O’Donnell) manage to be thoroughly engaging despite being burdened, in typical Brooks fashion, with more than their share of neurotic, obsessive behavior.

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In fact, it’s a measure of how psychologically shaky everyone in “I’ll Do Anything” is that unemployed actor Matt Hobbs (Nolte) comes off as almost stable by comparison. When the film’s main action begins, Matt is divorced from ex-wife Beth (Ullman) and hasn’t seen 6-year-old daughter Jeannie (Wright) in three years, a situation that is about to change.

For though the out-of-work Matt pleads that “the only full-time job I seem to have is not showing how scared I am,” Beth, a fanatical mother who believes “there is no such thing as spoiling a child,” has compelling reasons why Jeannie simply has to spend an indefinite period of time with her father.

Terrified at the thought, Matt in desperation calls up Cathy Breslow (Richardson), an attractive production company executive he’d met at an acting class to see if she knows of any jobs. Through Cathy he ends up working for her boss, producer Burke Adler of Popcorn Pictures (Albert Brooks), and Burke’s trusted market research associate, Nan Mulhanney (Julie Kavner).

Though it probably wasn’t planned that way, the relationship between Burke and Nan turns out to be the most involving part of “Anything.” While not related, the two Brookses have always been on the same wavelength, and Albert’s role as the tortured, tyrannical schlock producer who can’t have lunch because “that’s when everyone returns my calls because they’re trying to miss me” is even stronger than the one in “Broadcast News” that won him an Oscar nomination.

With the looks of his face rapidly changing from horror to befuddlement to desperation, Brooks’ Burke gleefully raises the energy level of the film whenever he’s on screen. And Kavner’s Nan does a beautiful job opposite him as the doyenne of test screenings who is compelled by virtue of an unlikely combination of prescription drugs to tell all the truth all the time.

While Burke and Nan think they have a difficult relationship, the most torturous ones in the film are the interactions Matt has both with his daughter and with Cathy, a bright but overmatched executive who means well but, as the personification of the uncertain nature of the movie business, has to carry rather more metaphorical baggage than is good for the part.

As for young Jeannie, she turns out to be a remarkably self-possessed, intensely bratty little person who totally flummoxes her dad without half trying. Wright, an amazing performer who had just turned 4 when she auditioned for this complex child’s role, has no difficulty holding her own against Nolte, who in his turn delivers one of the most relaxed and natural performances he’s given recently.

As funny and moving as it all can be, laced with the cockeyed grace of struggling humanity, even this brief retelling of the film’s diverse story lines shows why it was difficult to pull together. Though all its plots deal with relationships, they do not have much of a relationship with each other, and in the absence of a strong narrative through line, “I’ll Do Anything” can do no more than offer a glimpse of the promised land, not a trip inside.

‘I’ll Do Anything’

Nick Nolte: Matt Hobbs Albert Brooks: Burke Adler Julie Kavner: Nan Mulhanney Joely Richardson: Cathy Breslow Tracey Ullman: Beth Hobbs Whittni Wright: Jeannie Hobbs

A Gracie Films production, released by Columbia Pictures. Director James L. Brooks. Producers James L. Brooks, Polly Platt. Executive producer Penney Finkelman Cox. Screenplay James L. Brooks. Cinematographer Michael Ballhaus. Editor Richard Marks. Costumes Marlene Stewart. Music Hans Zimmer. Production design Stephen J. Lineweaver. Art director Bill Brzeski. Set decorator Cheryl Carasik. Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes.

MPAA rating: PG-13 , for “sexual language and situations.” Times guidelines: brief nudity and a comic sexual encounter.