Between the Bridge and the River (2006)

The eager, chatty debut of Craig Ferguson (eager, chatty host of CBS' Late Late Show) is a diverting-enough pseudo-philosophical spazz-out. Between the Bridge and the River traces four far-flung characters — dying Glaswegian George, his old friend Fraser (now a sex-addicted televangelist), monstrous Hollywood mogul Saul, and Saul's irresistible half-brother Leon, secret spawn of Frank Sinatra — on randy, multitrajectoried quests for enlightenment. The quartet treads toward a cosmically intertwined awakening via the dark paths of the collective unconscious (Jung shows up — in drag!), but Ferguson's story is half-conscious and digressive, like some bright but blotto cocktail-party raconteur. This ripping trip to nowhere heads vaguely west (''as is traditional for Scotsmen in search of a solution'') and terminates in too-easy Hollywood potshots (e.g., a celebrity swindle-cult called Brainyism) that the nimble-penned but underdisciplined Ferguson has no doubt been storing in the bottom drawer of his Late Late desk.