Schepisi is a fluid yet right-on-the-button director, starting with the first scene.

Using that happy/sad tension, Martin voices the impolite, uncool hunger that is fashionably stifled and dismissed.

Light and likable, with hearts unabashedly all over its sleeves, Roxanne is a winning romantic comedy whose appeal should cross age barriers and backgrounds -- giving it an across-the-board promise.

Martin is very funny in the role, and most ingenious about finding modern equivalents for the various bits of business in the original play. Yet the nagging question remains: Why?