SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK []

Been there, done that. Running time: 107 minutes. Rated R (profanity, sexual situations). At the Empire, the Lincoln Square, the Murray Hill, others.

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THE oft-postponed “Sidewalks of New York” is Edward Burns’ latest unwise attempt to imitate Woody Allen, most specifically the well-acted but hard-to-watch “Husbands and Wives.”

That film’s jumpy handheld camerawork and distracting jump-cuts are deployed – along with Allen’s device of an anonymous documentary filmmaker asking intimate questions of the characters – as writer-director-star Burns constructs a romantic roundelay to prove that New Yorkers are, duh, romantically frustrated neurotics.

Burns himself plays yet another outer-borough wiseguy – Tommy, a producer for a TV entertainment-news show who’s been thrown out of the apartment he shared with his ex-fiancée.

Looking for a new place, Tommy begins pursuing Annie (Heather Graham, Burns’ real-life ex-girlfriend), a gorgeous real estate agent who happens to be married.

Her husband, Griffin (Stanley Tucci), is a smarmy dentist carrying on with Ashley (the ubiquitous Brittany Murphy), an NYU coed young enough to be his daughter.

Ashley has her eye on Benjamin (David Krumholtz), a doorman and aspiring musician – who’s secretly stalking his estranged wife, teacher Maria (Rosario Dawson).

Bringing the story full circle, Maria becomes interested in the ambivalent Tommy.

All of the performances, especially Dawson’s, are strong – save that of Burns, who seems stuck in a rut both as an actor and director.

“Sidewalks of New York” wears out its welcome fast because of its artistic pretensions and self-absorbed characters. You’d be better off renting “Manhattan” instead.