"Jersey Girl," the newest Kevin Smith movie, briefly reunites Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez. But that's the least of its problems.

As we watch this long-shelved romantic comedy/family drama from the maker of "Clerks" and "Dogma," the questions mount. Can a golden-boy Manhattan public relations guy - played by Affleck, of course - survive becoming a professional outcast after publicly bashing his own client, the young Will Smith? Can he come back to Big Apple glory after seven years of working as a garbage man in New Jersey, all the while raising his daughter (Rachel Castro)?

Can George Carlin (as Ben's dad, Bart) find another career as the new Carroll O'Connor? Can Ben make it to his daughter's big school show at the end, despite a previous engagement with Jason Biggs? And will Will Smith himself play a cameo and lend a hand?

Those and other fascinating riddles are asked and answered in this big, gooey (but often likable) misfire of a movie that represents writer-director Kevin Smith's first entirely "serious" effort - and his first movie without the continuing characters Jay and Silent Bob. Much like Smith's best picture, 1997's "Chasing Amy," "Jersey Girl" is a more personal, less antic show than his norm, with real characters, more plausible situations and strenuous heart-tugging.

Smith focuses on single father and ex-public relations guy Ollie Trinke (Affleck), who has to raise daughter Gertie after her mother Gertrude (Lopez) dies in childbirth - and after his strained single-fatherhood prompts the public Smith-dissing crackup.

Years later, after slinging all that garbage, Ollie meets Maya (Tyler), a pretty video clerk who embarrasses him when he tries to rent sex tapes. Love blooms. Helping him along at home is his dad, who knows adult material, including the seven words you can't say on TV.

But can you buy any of this? "Jersey Girl" has a script that doesn't really make sense, and an oddly shifting tone that juggles sexy NC-17 elements and cutesy-poo family stuff. Even so, there's a sweetness and familial warmth about the movie that almost won me over. You can tell that both Smith (Kevin, that is) and the actors feel a lot of the scenes, and this depth of emotion helps the humor as well.

Toward the end, there's a pretty good scene with Affleck chum Matt Damon and ex-"Mallrats" star Jason Lee as two public relations guys telling Ollie he's their hero for trashing Will Smith - but that they'd be crazy to hire him. Later, when Will Smith shows up for his cameo, as you knew he would, he's responsible for the film's best single scene.

"Jersey Girl" is an oddity, hard to dislike but impossible to buy. If the public didn't accept a whole movie with Ben and Jennifer ("Gigli"), how will it react to the 15 or so minutes they get here, before Gertrude dies? How can they swallow Ollie's exile to the Jersey suburbs when he probably could have gotten a big-city job on TV in a flash?

Then again, whenever the movie gets too illogical, Tyler and Carlin are nice compensations. So are both of the Smiths. For that matter, so is New Jersey.