If My Dinner with Andre is any sign of where director Louis Malle is headed, he had better find a day job.

The entire film is a dinner conversation between playwright Wallace Shawn and his well-traveled friend Andre Gregory. On an intellectual level, the film provides moments of inspirational banter, however, much of it is mundane chatter about as provocative as a laundry list.

The more adventurous dialogue delves into the realm of philosophy, pondering such questions as whether habitual behavior is the end of living and the beginning of mere existence, and whether New York City is really a prison with all the people serving as both inmate and guard.

This more inventive dinner conversation does not come until the end, by which time the film has already ventured beyond the tolerance level of most. Shawn attempts to make the viewer more actively involved through stimulating conversation, but the piece is too laborious and its blase setting and nondescript camera work defeat the purpose.

One especially annoying aspect is Malle's boring editing. Granted, options are limited with only two subjects, but the editing becomes highly predictable -- it is almost like viewing a news program with a succession of shots showing the interviewee and then the interviewer shaking his/her head.

Surely Malle could have pulled something out of his hat; he does not even vary his shot selection as the topics of conversation change. This makes the dialogue seem like a tedious stream of consciousness.

The conversation also creeps along at a painful pace, with the majority of the film being Andre's oral travel diary. Andre tells of his desert travels with a Buddhist monk, his time spent with non-English-speaking Polish people, and even his harrowing cult-like experience of almost being buried alive. All of this has a modicum of fascination to it, but it does not suit a more than two hour film.

It takes a certain kind of person to be thrilled by My Dinner with Andre --one who can appreciate quaint, more intellectualist fare. It also takes about a gallon of strong coffee.