"Nobody's Baby" is a pale imitation of a Farrelly brothers movie in which two dumb-as-dirt drifters suddenly acquire a baby and "comic mayhem" ensues -- only this comic mayhem occurs not in a surreal world the Farrellys are so adept in creating but rather in a somewhat realistic world where men abuse women and a shotgun blast can result in homicide.

Screenwriter-director David Seltzer ("The Omen," "Shining Through") never finds a tone to marry the dumb comedy to the melodramatic instincts he exhibits in his story line and supporting characters. Nevertheless, babies have a knack for selling movies -- even weak ones. So while "Baby" is an odd choice for Sundance, the film could make inroads in the theatrical mainstream.

Skeet Ulrich and Gary Oldman play lifelong pals whose hapless misadventures inevitably land them in prison. An excellent opening credits sequence positions them as cons who originally met in an orphanage, with Oldman's Buford Dill acting as mentor to Ulrich's younger Billy Raedeen.

En route to a long stretch behind bars, they manage to escape from a prison van. They must separate but agree to meet at a rendezvous point across the Nevada border. (The film actually was shot in Utah.)

Billy hitches a ride in the back of a truck from where he sees -- indeed, he partially causes -- a car accident that kills all the vehicle's occupants save an infant he rescues moments before the car explodes.

Clueless about an infant's needs, he summons help at a ramshackle trailer park, where he and the baby become entangled in the troubled lives of its inhabitants. These include a casino card dealer (Mary Steenburgen), who recently gave her baby up for adoption; a show girl (Anna Gunn) and her aging American Indian boyfriend (Gordon Tootoosis); and a young waitress (Radha Mitchell) and her cruel boyfriend (Peter Greene).

When Buford rejoins his pal, they revert to Dumb and Dumber. Although with Oldman pulling out all the stops, many might find them Dumb and Really Annoying.

Misfired ransom attempts, the murder of the waitress' boyfriend, a bungled robbery of a pawn shop and several more bloody shootings punctuate the comic action -- most of these incidents in the name of scraping together a few bucks for the baby.

Audience acceptance of this unstable material might depend on reactions to Oldman. More and more, the British actor seems to want to submerge his personality and physicality in a collection of unrecognizable accents, facial hair and costumes.

As a Western hick with a penchant for the wildly inappropriate and having absolutely no moral sense, Oldman's character drives much of the plot. But where, one might ask, is this character taking the film?

Seltzer might have felt he needed Buford's antics to deflect and detract from his hero's essentially amoral behavior. But he has created a character whose obtuseness strains rather than contributes to the film's comic mood.

Ulrich has an appealing innocence, but he never wanders far from that one note. And how is an audience supposed to react, even in a zany comedy, to a character who, having spent most of his life in prison, cannot fight?

The rest of the "village" that temporarily raises the child fares better, though they belong to a different, more realistic movie. Steenburgen excels as the worn-out croupier grown weary of men and their tired tricks.

Mitchell's character, who is pivotal to the baby's future happiness, is not developed much beyond being a victim of domestic abuse. Tootoosis plays the stoic American Indian the way the late Chief Dan George used to in movies, while Gunn displays lively sass as the caustic chorine.

Technical credits are fine, including snappy Western tunes on the soundtrack.