Flannel Pajamas is curiously off. It begins on the first date of a couple. Stuart (Justin Kirk) and Nicole (Julianne Nicholson) verbally express attraction to each other, though their physical language conveys only a turgid wariness. They are also both immediately unlikable characters — she, brittle and unstable; he, controlling and wildly self-involved — although neither of them seem to register how obviously unappealing the other one is. If this level of self-involvement was the thrust of this movie, it'd be an interesting conceit that until now hasn't been explored much. Instead, the two fall into a dance of false intimacy, in which they transform into other irritating characters, rather than reveal the vulnerabilities fueling their irritating bravado. All of this movie, in fact, has that same feel of lousy improvisation. Major details about the characters emerge from left field during dialogue and major events transpire off screen, so that you're not sure what the events that do occur onscreen are intended to amount to, especially as they spool out so rapidly. And yet, this movie is not easy to dismiss out of hand, maybe because it answers harder questions about why people don't stay together than most films even dare to ask. Its chief problem is no small thing, however: it is as unlikable as its characters.