A young bride takes a journey of self-discovery in Miramax's "Committed." Unfortunately, this story road is laden with plotholes and takes so many dippy bends courtesy of its addle-brained lead character that we soon lose interest in the entire meandering expedition.

Starring Heather Graham as the newly married Joline, "Committed" does double duty as a title. It indicates the zeal and commitment that Joline has to her young marriage, and it also derives from the fact that said unrelenting tenacity causes her to be institutionalized. A road picture mapped out around obsessive love, "Committed" swells with potential, both as a comedy and as a story of one young woman's growth. Unfortunately, owing to writer/director Lisa Krueger's sophomoric scripting; it's also a tediously annoying story. After a while, we lose interest in Joline's quest and, even worse, we become annoyed with her. Even 14-year olds with a smattering of sophistication will find her antics tiring and misguided. And, even as an instructive piece on obsessive love, it's so thinly drawn and skimpily fleshed that it rouses little more than boredom.

A variation on the vaunted boy-meets-girl/boy-loses-girl/boy-gets-girl formula, "Committed" might be described as girl-marries-boy/boy-flies-coop/girl-stalks-boy. Sound kind of troubling? Well, yes it is. In this slight saga, husband Carl (Luke Wilson) leaves wife Joline (Graham) unexpectedly right on the heels of their wedding. He's just lit off somewhere, and Joline doesn't know where. She decides to track him down, and by some semi-clever detective work, decides Carl is in Texas. So, she sets off on a winding jaunt to the Lone Star state; along the way she realizes that she might not necessarily even want him back. Still, she perseveres, rationalizing that she's checking up on his welfare.

At this juncture, "Committed" turns into somewhat of a road movie, but unfortunately its story compass shakes all over the place. Ultimately, Joline catches up with Carl who seems content with his new life, taking photos for an El Paso paper. To boot, Carl's even taken up with a new woman, a Mexican waitress (Patricia Vasquez). To say the least, Carl is not altogether happy to see Joline, and he's further irked when she sets up camp outside his trailer.

Neither a smart psychological portrait of obsessive love nor an appealing romantic comedy - we never root for the two to get back together - "Committed" is a half-baked narrative that never coalesces. It's flecked with simple-minded spiritual homilies and eventually cascades into a dopey, feel-good heap.

Still, there are some minor diversions along the way, namely some interesting roadside attractions that pop up, courtesy mainly of the Texas setting. There's also an appealing performance by Casey Aflfleck as Joline's sweet-natured brother, and a sparkling turn by Patricia Velasquez as the vivacious waitress. While Heather Graham conveys a youthful exuberance in her role as jilted wife, she can't overcome Krueger's inane writing and inarticulate storytelling.