By Rod Dreher, New York Post

WE'VE grown so accustomed to romantic comedies attempting to sweep us off our feet that it's easy to undervalue the slight but thoroughly enjoyable pleasures offered by movies with no greater ambition than to flirt coquettishly and sweetly. I'm thinking of movies such as "Sliding Doors," "Next Stop Wonderland," and this weekend's Miramax confection, "The Very Thought of You."

It's a minor but delightful ensemble comedy in which a beautiful, sad American girl runs off to London on a desperate lark and excites the interest of three Englishmen - one of whom is destined to be her true love.

There's something about Martha (Monica Potter), the lemony-fresh, Julia Roberts-y blonde who inadvertently wows smooth-talking English record exec Daniel (Tom Hollander) at the Minneapolis airport. Martha, frustrated with her going-nowhere life, hopes something exciting will turn up in London. Daniel is de-termined to be that something. He cheesily woos Martha by offering her a room at a posh hotel, and only asks that she agree to have lunch with him. She warily accepts, though clearly believes this sideburned player is more hot air than hip.

Meanwhile, Daniel's drunken failed-actor friend Frank (Rufus Sewell) runs across Martha in the park. Seeing an opportunity to twit his pal, rascally Frank makes his best case to win the standoffish Yank's affections.

Finally, Laurence (Joseph Fiennes), Daniel and Frank's buddy, becomes mixed up in the farcical affair when he crosses paths with Martha in an only-in-the-movies twist that's as giddily fun as it is implausible.

She's only going to end up with one of these guys, and it's a fair bet it'll be the one with the doe eyes and the decent heart.

"The Very Thought of You" is about aging Gen-Xers stuck in comfortable ruts they lack the courage to leap out of. Hollander and Sewell could hardly be more entertaining as a pair of self-absorbed ninnies too sidelined by their self-absorption to capture the heart of a princess.

The movie could have used more of their edgy, appalling antics, because Fiennes is agonizingly soft and dewy and right-minded as the male lead. His shy Laurence is the sort of sallow-chested sensitivo who, if he ever gets around to seizing the day, will drown it in clammy-palmed perspiration.

OK, so it's not "Shakespeare in Love." Still, "The Very Thought of You" is too pleasingly cluttered with fabulous shots of London, appealing performances and sardonic English sensibility to be dismissed. It's as light as a feather yet tickles all the same.