Writer-director Edward Burns is a hard-luck PI in Looking for Kitty, David Krumholtz is the upstate rube who engages his services in a vain search for a runaway spouse. Sentimental yet insensate, this forgotten '04 trifle is Burns at his worst: Wounded men declare their independence from unseen bitch-goddesses, and the only good wives are dead ones. Meanwhile, Burns pads around Gotham, yammering yesterday's op-eds about Disneyfication and ''classic New York holdouts.'' He somehow manages to sound fogyish and immature.

