Caffeine is a British comedy (with some American actors) that's set in the Black Cat Cafe, a London hangout where the customers and staff seem to be in a contest to see who can be more eccentric.

It sounds like it might be something along the lines of Friends, or that TV show's British counterpart, Coupling. But the too-contrived, too-self-conscious script by Dean Craig is never funny enough and his whiny characters wear out their welcomes long before the end.

Part of the problem is that many of the characters take themselves too seriously . . . or maybe not seriously enough. There's the Black Cat's manager, Rachel (Marsha Thomason), who kicks out her longtime boyfriend and chief cook, Charlie (Callum Blue), after he confesses that he had a menage a trois the night before . . . with twin sisters no less. There's the young man on a bad drug trip (Andrew Lee Potts), who thinks he might have prostate cancer, discovering that the longtime girlfriend he has just dumped (Katherine Heigl of Grey's Anatomy) has arrived at a nearby table with her blind date, a gun-toting chauvinist who wants to take her back to his place. There's the man who seeks help from his friend and attorney about his recent arrest for exposing himself to a 12-year-old girl. There's the attorney himself, about to be married, who confesses to his fiancee that he's a transvestite. There's the antsy man who is about to propose marriage to his disinterested girlfriend, until he discovers that she has a secret life as a well-known porn actress. There's the doddering old lady, grandmother of the barmaid (Mena Suvari), who is out of the institution for the day and divides her time between staring sullenly at the other patrons or threatening them with physical harm. There's the waiter (Breckin Mayer) who is anxiously waiting word from his publisher about whether his first novel will be published.

Whenever a character reveals some unsavory bit of information about himself, the person hearing it then fantasizes the worst. Thus, when the woman hears that her fiance likes to dress in women's clothes, she sees him in a wedding dress at the Black Cat.

There are lots more characters, too, each with his or her own peculiarities. They hang out at the Black Cat for what seems like all day and director John Cosgrove's camera barely leaves the place. Caffeine could just as easily have been a stage play, although it probably wouldn't work any better there.

In the midst of all of this, a troubador arrives to break into a woeful song that ends with "I just want to die." Enough said.

Caffeine will play at 9:15 tonight at the Columbus Theatre as part of the Rhode Island International Film Festival.

mjanuson@projo.com / 401-277-7276