TRUST THE MAN

(two and a half stars)

** 1/2

Contrived fun.

Running time: 100 minutes. Rated R (profanity, sex). At the Empire, the Lincoln Square, the First and 62nd, others.

AS faux Woody Allen movies go, “Trust the Man” is one of the more diverting recent entries in the genre, with a top-drawer cast, well-chosen Manhattan locations and a sharper script than Allen himself has managed in a while.

Bart Freundlich, who usually directs his wife, Julianne Moore, in heavy-breathing dramas, demonstrates an agreeably light touch with this comic trifle about a pair of couples with romantic problems.

Moore is very funny as Rebecca, a film actress and mother of two who is so stressed about rehearsals for a play at Lincoln Center that she’s oblivious to problems in her marriage to Tom (David Duchovny), an advertising guy with an addiction to online sex.

Rebecca’s brother – and Tom’s best friend – is Tobey (Billy Crudup), a 30-something writer whose perpetually arrested development is starting to grate on his longtime girlfriend Elaine (the ubiquitous Maggie Gyllenhaal).

She wants to get married and pregnant already.

Elaine finally throws Tobey out, even as his brother-in-law is carrying on an affair with a divorcée who has a kid at the same school as Tom – who unburdens himself at meetings for sex addicts.

This being a faux Woody Allen movie, everybody has shrinks. Tom and Rebecca consult with Garry Shandling – whose office is equipped with a waterfall – while the flaky Tobey starts stalking his therapist (Bob Balaban) to find out about the shrink’s problems.

While there is nothing startlingly new here – right down to the climactic romantic speeches both guys end up making to large public audiences – at least both couples have considerable chemistry, which surprisingly is often not the case in romantic comedies.

Moore and Duchovny, who were teamed in the dire sci-fi comedy “Evolution” a few seasons back, actually seem like an old married couple.

Crudup (star of Freundlich’s superheavy “World Traveler”) dials down his trademark intensity and is especially winning in a rare flat-out comic role, as the kind of flaky Manhattanite who plans his life around alternate-side-of-the-street parking.

James Le Gros and Ellen Barkin have amusing cameos as would-be suitors of Elaine, while Eva Mendes appears briefly as an old flame of Tobey’s.

By the diminished standards of mid-August, “Trust the Man” is a better than adequate date movie.