With his superior 1993 coming-of-age short Pool Days director/writer Brian Sloan displayed a knack for depicting how people bounce off of one another when their paths cross, using a classic love triangle to make the reactions all the more intense.

In I Think I Do, his warmly received feature debut, Sloan pries apart the triangle and broadens his experiment in human behavior by involving seven tight knit George Washington University chums and spying on them first at school and then, later, at the wedding of the only two who've realized they belong together all along. The others aren't sure if they really love the person they seem to see as more than just a buddy...but they think they do.

The central but by no means only pair of romantic misfits is Bob (Alexis Arquette) and Brendan (Christian Maelen). Bob is a slightly nerdy gay everyman and Brendan is an impossibly gorgeous, presumably hetero hottie who also happens to be Bob's bestest friend and roommate. They are as inseparable as playful puppies and just as oh-so-cute together. Except they aren't together. At least, they think they aren't.

What threatens to separate them forever is that exact inexactness of feeling, Bob, who isn't initially out to his friends even if he is out on sight to the audience, certainly has a crush on Brendan; but how does Brendan view Bob? Could all those references he keeps making to Bob's lips be meaningless?

The other, heterosexual, friends are cute couple Carol (Lauren Vaclez) and Matt (Jamie Harrold), loveable pothead "himbo" Eric (Guillermo Diaz), good sport Beth (Maddie Corman) and the friend nobody likes, not really, the man-hungry Sarah (Marianne Hagan).

Carol and Matt have found their passion - for each other and, oddly, given that the film is contemporary, for David Cassidy - and serve as the shining example. Beth archly endures Eric's girl-devouring while doing everything but bite her palm in frustration behind his back. Sarah craves Brendan, who seems on the fence.

Despite the mixed signals, these friends as a unit manage a genuine warmth, achieved through witty banter and a cheerful recognition of each other's shortcomings. One of the most obvious strengths of the film from the very beginning is that its milieu is not exclusively gay. More adventurously, it's also not only male, and not only white. The seven friends are on the same wavelength, but they're also unique individuals from various ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds. Rarely has a group so large been so believably and charmingly captured on screen - you may find yourself wishing you were a part of their clique...

Love is in the air, but the uneasy status of Bob and Brendan's relationship comes to a head when the latest of one too many wrestling matches ends with a possibly accidental grope of Brendan's ass and a rather deliberate pounding of Bob's jaw. The gravity of this outburst makes for high drama and hints that Brendan may have as much of an issue with Bob as Bob does with Brendan.

The group reunites five years later for the wedding of Carol and Matt. The ways in which Sloan sketches his already astereotypical characters' development since college are as amusing as they are plausible. Most interestingly, slutty Sarah is now a political conservative working for a realllllly cool senator (the film's DC locale is referenced sparingly since it was mostly filmed in New York). Bob is now a successful writer for a daytime soap. He shows up with his boyfriend of one year and 18 weeks, who is the show's resident heartthrob and a household name: Sterling Scott (Tuc Watkins). A still sheepish Brendan arrives with an agenda that includes a heartfelt apology and a confession: he's gay and in love with Bob. He drilled Bob five years earlier when he really wanted to nail him.

Will Bob and Brendan become Bob & Brendan? Will Beth finally succeed in capturing Eric's attention? Will any of their friendships suffer for all this, this change?

I Think I Do is a frothy romantic comedy of the sort that's usually done expensively and sluggishly by mainstream moviemakers. It's a genre that's taken for granted to the point where some of the works that fall into this category are far better casting coups than actual, end-result movies. I Think I Do has a lot to teach these bigger, yet somewhat smaller, films.

Most importantly, the direction is snappy. While I Think I Do is not exactly the “screwball comedy" it hopes to be mistaken for, it moves at a clip that forces maximum amusement from its above-average lines.

The cast is so uniformly excellent it's hard to single out MVPs, but making the most of a role that could easily have been window dressing, Tuc Watkins - probably benefiting from his real-life soap experience - is delightfully funny at every turn. From Sterling's rah-rah excitement at being in a relationship to his understated but hilariously self-satisfied dealings with his many fans, Watkins is a revelation. "No wedding, no relationship and no residuals!" he memorably pouts when he feels he's lost Bob to Brendan.

Arquette, who is now more known for his drag persona than as a film actor, is sturdy in his anchoring of the antics swirling around him and Maelen brings a Cary Grant quality to Brendan, the heartthrob who's just gone gay all of a sudden. The duo has great chemistry, which makes them sizzle, in the same way that the film has genuine heart, which is what enables any romantic comedy to succeed.

Maddie Corman is so kooky and cute as Beth it's a shame she isn't more prominent, but an obviously impromptu fit of giggles between her and the always spot-on Guillermo Diaz is the film's realest and funniest moment.

Sarah should be really unlikable, but Marianne Hagan manages to make her simultaneously bitchy and an underdog worth rooting for, like a lost character from "Seinfeld". She receives and makes the most of some of the film's best zingers.

Sloan's love affair with the soap opera “One Life To Live” first surfaced when he cast Josh Weinstein in Pool Days. In I Think I Do, not only does he give Tuc Watkins a fabulously funny part, he also casts OLTL vet Patricia Mauceri as a controlling mother of the bride. She turns out to be a hoot and a half.

In the "why not?" column, Marni Nixon (among other jobs, she provided the singing voice for Natalie Wood in West Side Story) makes her first feature appearance in 30 years as Aunt Alice, a buttinsky wedding guest, and Uma's brother Dechen Thurman appears as a randy photographer who helps Beth forget about Eric for about three seconds.

A half-hearted use of title cards is pointless and goes nowhere and the happy ending, as welcome as it is expected, is not as skillfully executed as earlier and middle scenes. But overall, I Think I Do delivers.

It’s by no means a timeless classic. Rather, it is a timeful (references to "I've fallen...and I can't get up!", Dole/Kemp and raves) and kinda slight romp that nonetheless shows Hollywood how it should be and could be done - with a respect for the genre, the actors and the audience. I Think I Do makes romantic comedy look like a snap, and makes its many cousins, particularly those with gay principals, look even more agonizingly forced than they already are.