That’s the advice given to Jack Ryan (Owen Wilson) by North Shore district judge Walter Crewes (Morgan Freeman), and it couldn’t be more apt. Not about small-time thief Jack and his potential plight, but about the movie he’s lackadaisically working so hard in “The Big Bounce.” This is a film that, on the surface, really seems to be going somewhere, really making an effort. But as the jokes sort of fizzle and the romance falls flat and the plot keeps failing to thicken, the impression starts forming that all that promise is only an illusion.

Unfortunately, it is, “The Big Bounce” a tepid comedic noir sputtering at half-speed with only a gentle chuckle here and there for comfort.

Not that there isn’t potential. Based on the slight but juicy novel of the same name by the great Elmore Leonard and featuring a game cast led by Wilson, Freeman, Gary Sinise, Charlie Sheen and Vinnie Jones, “The Big Bounce” is definitely a movie I kept wanting to enjoy. Wilson and Freeman, in fact, share such slacker-dude chemistry and what-the-hell bedeviled bravado that they’re a joy to watch. Sheen, too, seems to particularly relish his sad-sack character, a pathetic loser of a rube named Bob Jr. He’s hysterically funny at times injecting the film with just the type of pathetic silliness the rest of it sorely lacks.

They’re really the only ones of the big names to do anything, however. Both Sinise, playing the film’s lead villain corporate industrialist Ray Ritchie, and Jones, playing Ritchie’s foreman and main enforcer Lou Harris, are stuck in one-note roles. I guess that’s okay, for in response they both deliver singularly witless one-note performances making their brief screen time something akin to a friendly gift. These are paycheck roles for both and it shows, Sinise and Jones phoning in their performances with such obviousness it’s nearly insulting. The great Bebe Neuwirth is also wasted, although she does manage a couple scenes of giggly fun teetering around on her high heels through a supermarket.

At least they fare better than relative newcomer Sara Foster. She’s terrible, and unbelievably miscast as the picture’s catalyst and plot instigator thrill-seeking local girl Nancy Hayes. Her character is the one that ropes Jack into a seductive game of cat and mouse, lasciviously trying to work her supple charms to rope him into helping her steal $200,000 from Ritchie. It’s your typical Lana Turner-esque femme fatale, and goodness knows Foster’s got the body for it (I wish I could wear a canary yellow bikini half as well). It’s the chops she’s missing, the only seductive words coming out of her mouth the sounds of silence.

Still, Wilson and Freeman almost save the picture by themselves. I loved the way Wilson plays right up against his own loafer persona. You can see the wheels turning behind the surfer dude façade, the easygoing slowness all a part of his own captivating game. The actor has a good half-dozen moments of subtle brilliance. My favorites included his laconic breaking and entering into a local sorority house and his off-hand – almost uninterested – conversations with an extremely buxom bungalow tenant known strictly as, “number nine.”

Freeman matches him scene for scene. In particular, his moments hamming it up with Willie Nelson and Harry Dean Stanton are priceless, the three of them creating interesting and appealing characterizations with only the scantiest of screen time. I also loved each of the actor’s one-on-one conversations with Wilson, the duo having a Mutt and Jeff rapport singularly unforced and charming.

It’s weird then that this film manages to sink so thoroughly, but the quirky and talented director George Armitage never really gets a handle on the correct pace or tone. Weird because he’s done great things with material just like this before, crafting two near-classics with the Alec Baldwin sleeper “Miami Blues” and the John Cusack cult hit “Grosse Pointe Blank.” Those two, very much like this one, had a dark edge yet still managed to keep a beguilingly surreal sunny disposition. Unlike those, however, this time out it’s just not very funny and the noir-ish con at the center of the tale is such a forgone conclusion there really isn’t any suspense.