That's not what I meant when I said "nice stems": "Broken Flowers"

What we have here is an unfortunate combination: a director who's too artsy-fartsy for his own good and an actor who wants to cultivate a "serious" reputation.

I must admit I've never bought into the schtick of Jim Jarmusch. My friend John was always pushing "Dead Man" on me, and when I finally did watch it, it didn't seem too bad. The only problem: I kept falling asleep. Really. Didn't matter how many times I tried to finish it ... I must have nodded off three different nights before saying, "Screw it."

Then there was "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai," which was amusing but ultimately unsatisfying. Sure, Forest Whitaker is intriguing as an assassin who fancies the old Japanese ways, and you haven't lived until you've seen a wiseguy drop some Public Enemy lyrics. But it was kind of plodding and seem more of a concept than an actual story.

"Broken Flowers" suffers from the same problem, even with Jarmusch throwing different characters at us. Our story has an aging bachelor (Bill "The Man Who Knew Too Little" Murray) learning through an anonymous letter from an old flame that he has a son. Prodded by his neighbor -- the always watchable Jeffrey Wright -- our hero sets off to find out which former squeeze birthed his boy.

This leads to all sorts of odd -- but far from zany -- encounters with different types of women. It's an impressive honor roll: Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange and Tilda Swinton. We also see Murray's character -- Don Johnston ... "John-STON" -- be tempted by sweet young things, from Stone's full-frontal teenage daughter (Bill Fichtner's daughter in the TV show "Invasion," and let me just say ... wow) to Chloe Sevigny, who, for once, doesn't get naked. Boo!

All this causes a bunch of soul-searching in our protagonist. We know this because he stares a lot, says little and listens to the same instrumental songs on the CD his neighbor made for him. Oh, and he has weird flashback/dreams, too. It's deep stuff, man. Eventually, Murray meets his son ... or does he? It's a big mystery, although I'm sure there's an Important Lesson in there.

Like "Ghost Dog," "Flowers" mainly gives us some interesting parts but not much of a whole. A few scenes are rich and on target, but others are kind of flat, and it definitely doesn't add up to anything great. I'm sure he meant well, but Murray seems to be going for that introspective, older, lost man thing that he did so well in "Lost in Translation." Alas, neither his character nor the story have much depth, and I can't believe he inhabited this role as much as that one (or his great turn in "Rushmore," for that matter). Maybe now he can get the serious stuff out of his system and get back to doing funny. You know, like the "Garfield" movies. Hide your lasagna, Jon!