November 22, 2001 | Maybe the folks at Paramount Classics should have stuck to their original plan, and opened Edward Burns’ Sidewalks of New York late last summer. Back then, we could have enjoyed this lightweight but extremely likable comedy-drama for its own merits, and not worried about extraneous matters.

But no, the movie was shifted to a Sept. 21 opening date, based on the debatable yet not-unreasonable notion that movies made by, for and about grown-ups get more attention in the fall, after the youth-skewing popcorn pictures of summer have run their courses. Unfortunately, the terrible events of Sept. 11 made the Paramount decision-makers more than a little skittish. They were nervous about how audiences might respond to any movie, even one as innocuous as this one, with “New York” in its title. Trade papers and wire services duly reported their nervousness, and much was made of their decision to bump the release once again, to this week.

Which, of course, means that some ticketbuyers will be primed to look for fleeting shots of the World Trade Center, and to listen for any bits of dialogue that, in the wake of Sept. 11, might resound with darker ironies than Burns ever intended.

And yes, I freely admit: Everything I’ve just written could make some moviegoers even more observant of irrelevancies. It’s a bit like warning that graphic violence in a movie about warring street gangs might incite bloody clashes at megaplexes. By stating that, I risk encouraging the very behavior that I’m dreading.

Do I digress? No doubt. But Sidewalks of New York is the kind of movie that encourages such random thinking and navel gazing.

Burns, the gifted indie filmmaker (and part-time actor, for himself and other directors) who first attracted attention with The Brothers McMullen, obviously was influenced by Woody Allen movies in general, and Husbands and Wives in particular, while concocting this romantic roundelay about six interconnected New Yorkers and a not-so-innocent bystander. As Allen did in Husbands and Wives, Burns employs jump-cuts, a skittish hand-held camera and faux-documentary interviews to infuse his material with a sense of urgency and an air of verisimilitude. Style and substance are, for the most part, satisfyingly complementary, even though Burns, like Allen, occasionally goes a little too far, a tad too self-consciously.

But what’s equally important is something else Burns borrows -– from Allen’s movies, of course, but also from the freewheeling, character-driven comedy-dramas directed by such French New Wave filmmakers as Eric Rohmer and Francois Truffaut. In Sidewalks of New York, what happens isn’t nearly as interesting as what is said, and Burns isn’t afraid to pause for long periods while we lean forward and listen.

People talk their way into and out of romantic entanglements, talk themselves into and out of happiness. Some of the language they use is pop psychobabble, some of it is deeply earnest and heartfelt, some of it is desperate and deceitful  –- some of it is all of the above. And almost all of it shouldn’t be taken at face value. Burns has written some pleasingly complex characters, cast first-rate actors to play them, and placed them in amusingly complicated situations.

Consider the possibilities. Tommy (Burns), a production assistant at an Entertainment Tonight type of TV show, wants more than a one-night stand with Maria (Rosario Dawson), an Italian-Puerto Rican schoolteacher he “meets cute” at a video store when both try to rent Breakfast at Tiffany’s. But Maria maintains her emotional distance, because she’s recently divorced from Benjamin (David Krumholtz), a hotel doorman and would-be musician who continues to pester her for a reconciliation.

Even as he annoys his ex-wife, however, Benjamin is increasingly attracted to Ashley (Brittany Murphy), a 19-year-old waitress and part-time college student who’s having an adulterous affair with 39-year-old Griffin (Stanley Tucci), a compulsive womanizer who claims to have “a very European outlook on marriage.” Which is very convenient for him, but not so great for his discontented wife, Annie (Heather Graham), a real-estate agent who’s showing apartments to, and taking more than a professional interest in, Tommy.

Now if you’ve been keeping count, you know I haven’t yet gotten around to the not-so-innocent bystander. That would be Carpo (Dennis Farina), a cynical, swaggering TV host who has gone past middle-age craziness to reach a comfort zone of fiftysomething self-delusion. Proudly boasting that he has “had sex with 500 women and left them all baying at the moon,” Carpo generously offers to serve as a role model for Tommy. (“A wife and children,” he warns the younger man, “will drive you to an early grave.”) It says a lot about Burns’ generosity of spirit as a storyteller that, every so often, Carpo gets to say something that isn’t entirely absurd.

The other characters get a lot more screen time, and reveal much about themselves -– quite often, more than they might desire -– through what they say to themselves and each other. Listen closely, and you’ll hear razor-sharp zingers disguised as off-hand remarks (“Oh, is this your father?”), or prideful rejoinders that hint at simmering resentment. (Tommy tries to make a joke of it, but he’s clearly upset when Annie suggests that, because he was born in Queens, not Manhattan, he’s somehow less of a “real” New Yorker than she.)

Listen even more carefully, and you’ll note that, time and again, when people speak words of love, or talk about being in love, they sound like they’re really in love with the idea of being in love, sort of like the grown-up Antoine Doinel in Truffaut’s Stolen Kisses and Bed and Board.

Burns is a romantic, but he’s also a realist: He refuses to ensure happily-ever-aftering for everyone at the close of Sidewalks of New York, largely because he knows, and we eventually realize, that some of these folks, perhaps all of them, will never be completely satisfied. A sequel set two years later might find any of them, maybe each of them, attached to a different partner. The movie doesn’t suggest this is a bad thing, or a good thing. It simply is. That’s life, and love, in the big city. Even after Sept. 11, some things haven’t changed.