In "Nadine," Robert Benton's easily identifiable, very amiable new comedy, Nadine and Vernon find themselves up to their eyeballs in lunatic events that constantly threaten to overwhelm them as well as the movie.

Directed by Tom Vaughan 96 minutes "Starter for Ten," an amiable, nostalgic British comedy from the director Tom Vaughan, tackles a lofty subject - the allure of knowledge - with down-to-earth charm.

Based on Ms. Vardalos's one-woman show, which was based in turn on her upbringing in Winnipeg, Manitoba, "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" is an amiable, offhanded comedy about ethnic identity and last-chance romance.

Silvio Soldini's amiable new comedy suggests that an older, better Italy of imagination, rationality and civility survives on the fringes of a modern nation obsessed, like most others, with consumerism, empty prosperity and easy pleasure.

Colette Burson's amiable new comedy, which opens today at Cinema Village, follows three seniors at the prestigious (and barely fictitious) Halton School in Manhattan as they struggle to find academic advancement and sexual fulfillment.

Channel 4 called it an "amiable comedy with a handful of good tunes" that "lacks the satirical bite which its story may suggest.

But in Alice Wu's amiable romantic comedy, "Saving Face," which examines the lives of three generations of Chinese-Americans living in New York, it is a love affair between two young, attractive Chinese-American women.

Janet Maslin of the New York Times called it "a lazy but amiable comedy" and praised Murray for achieving "a sardonically exaggerated calm that can be very entertaining".

But for children not old enough to grasp its larger resonance, "But the Giraffe" is essentially an amiable little comedy that extols the virtue of selflessness and sharing.

Norman is only marginally odder than the other eccentric men who straggle through the smart, amiable comedy directed by Beeban Kidron and written by Marcy Kahan.