These days, it often appears as if Hollywood has forgotten the recipe for whipping up romantic screwball comedies without turning the fare into overstuffed, cinematic disasters. But Michael Showalter, who wrote, directed and stars as a repressed accountant in The Baxter, pulls it off with the aid of a group of talented comedy players. His Elliot Sherman is the classic "guy left at the altar" in romantic movies. Elliot is the wrong guy for the right girl, the same sort of earnest chap that Ralph Bellamy used to play in movies like His Girl Friday. Elliot, a decent fellow with an alert, birdlike mien, can't believe his good luck when he lands blonde bombshell Caroline (Elizabeth Banks), but he knows full well that he's what his grandma called a "baxter"; namely, the kind of dull, old-fashioned guy that a Caroline may sometimes settle for, but could never truly love. And that means that disaster is on the way in the form of a dashing and handsome old boyfriend (Justin Theroux). Elliot's humiliation at the altar is all but inevitable; and so distressed is good-hearted Elliot at the prospect of another romantic disaster in his life that he barely registers that the cute office temp (Michelle Williams), a Minnesotan newly arrived in the Big Apple, who shares his love of reading the dictionary, is smitten with him.