After spending the last few years perfecting his laidback, cheerful stoner persona in misconceived star vehicles ("Behind Enemy Lines") and priceless supporting turns ("Meet the Parents"), Owen Wilson has finally been cast as a surfer, the archetypical "dude" role best-suited for his earnest charisma.

Warner Bros. executives should be kissing the feet of the casting director who chose Wilson this time, because if anyone but Wilson had played the lead role in "The Big Bounce," director George Armitage's new caper-comedy, I would have made a beeline for the theatre exit by the end of the second reel or so.

Without Wilson's involvement, the film would be almost offensive in its inconsequence; with him, it's simple, diverting and aimless, kind of like the actor himself.

Based on a novel by legendary crime writer Elmore Leonard (previously adapted to the screen in 1969 with Ryan O'Neal), "The Big Bounce" employs one of the writer's standard twisty narratives, which are usually mere backdrops for a variety of colorful, quirky characters and bursts of finely calibrated dialogue.

In the latest screen version of Leonard's book, Wilson stars as Jack Ryan (no relation to Tom Clancy's oft-used hero), an ex-con/surfing enthusiast living in Hawaii with a penchant for quick scams and — surprise, surprise — readily delivered quips.

When the mistress of Ray Ritchie (Gary Sinise) — Jack's onetime employer and a shady land developer — offers him the chance to steal $200,000 from his former boss, the smitten thief agrees against the better judgment of his friend Walter Crewes (Morgan Freeman), a local district judge and Jack's current employer.

As Nancy, the scheming mistress and Jack's love interest, newcomer Sara Foster fills a bikini nicely but hardly manages to imbue her femme fatale with the necessary amount of duplicity and seductiveness. We never have any doubt about Nancy's dishonesty, a weakness that diffuses any suspense, and even though Wilson convincingly moves through the early stages of puppy love, his yearning and Foster's one-dimensionality generate the romanticism of a waterlogged "Baywatch" episode.

Rounding out the supporting cast, Freeman does his typical mentor shtick — someone get this man a "Shawshank," please, before he gets pigeonholed into playing presidents, cops and deities. Elsewhere, a mustached Charlie Sheen weasels around like he has an impending court date and, bizarrely, Willie Nelson appears as a deputy friend of Judge Crewes.

There are double-crosses aplenty, of course, and a few choice moments of slapstick between Jack and whichever antagonist he's facing. Unfortunately, Sebastian Gutierrez, the film's screenwriter, excised all traces of Leonard's sparkling dialogue from his adaptation, leaving it relatively easy to differentiate Wilson's improvisations from the limpness appropriated into the script.

Also problematic are the story elements Gutierrez (or the filmmakers for that matter) forgot to include from Leonard's novel, specifically any semblance of what the hell happens in the climax.

While it's all pretty clear once the end credits begin to roll — after a merciful 108 minutes — if you're going to make your storyline twisty in that clever switch-and-bait-way, at least do so without flagrantly confusing and then insulting your audience.

Stripped of any narrative plausibility and characterization, and subsisting on the amiability of its star, "The Big Bounce," like most Wilson features, is ultimately nothing more than a steppingstone between the actor's next Ben Stiller collaboration and Wes Anderson project; both coming later this year.