The Baxter’s Elliot Sherman is the very embodiment of romantic compromise. If George Thorogood’s “Bad to the Bone” announces swaggering screen bad boys and exotically flavored orchestral scores herald the arrival of cinema’s most sensitive heartthrobs, Death Cab for Cutie’s “The Sound of Settling” would serve as the putative theme song for Elliot, a dowdy but sincere accountant who finds himself caught between well-heeled fiancée Caroline Swann (The 40-Year-Old Virgin’s Elizabeth Banks) and Cecil Mills (Michelle Williams), a bookish temp who seems on the surface a much better geek match given that both she and Elliot read the dictionary as a book.

The Baxter marks the feature directorial debut of Michael Showalter, who of course got his start as part of the sprawling comedy collective The State — which achieved a cultish following in the 1990s via an eponymous sketch show on MTV — and later went on to co-script and produce the peerless summer camp send-up Wet Hot American Summer. Showalter’s leaping off point for The Baxter is the great screwball romantic comedies of the 1930s and ’40s, films in which second male leads like Ralph Bellamy and John Howard took it squarely on the chin when the Cary Grants of the world swept in and relieved them of their women. (For a modern day comparison, think of Bill Pullman’s jettisoned character from Nora Ephron’s Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle.) The twist here is that The Baxter repositions the nice guy who never gets the girl (hence the stiff but regal nickname) as its leading man, to drolly winning if extremely dry effect.

The film’s basic story arc finds Elliot (whom Showalter also stars as) awkwardly attempting to assert himself and land his leading lady, even if in his heart there’s some confusion as to whom that is. Though he’s not a virgin, Elliot is a man-child whose unfailing politeness (“Like I always say, compromise is the key to success…”) has metamorphosed into a sort of wussy, serial acquiescence. When Caroline’s dashing ex-boyfriend Bradley Lake (Justin Theroux) arrives on the scene, Elliot recognizes the familiar warning signs of an impending dumping and reacts alternately with nice-guy petulance — think of the most fastidious passive-aggressiveness possible — and wan resignation.

Showalter’s mannered comedy is as distinctive and guileless as it is perhaps out-of-fashion, or at least decidedly non-mainstream. It stems from situational awkwardness and absurdity, and is always perfectly balanced between heaping helpings of earnestness and silliness. (Frequent collaborators and Stella costars David Wain and Michael Ian Black also pop up here, as Elliot’s emasculated brother-in-law-in-waiting and a zonked-out neighbor, respectively.) It’s micro comedy instead of macro comedy, in other words, and if broader humor and joke-driven laughs are more your forte then you won’t want to waste your time with The Baxter.

If wry, understated character comedy is up your alley, though, you’ll likely dig this movie. For most of its running time, it really works; things only bog down when Showalter starts relying too heavily on narration and contrivance to advance scenes. The former is funny when building up the temperament and personality of Elliot, but less so after the parameters of character roundelay have already been clearly established. A brief scene with The Station Agent’s Peter Dinklage as a (gay) wedding planner also falls flat.

The amusingly observant point of the film, though, is that for all we allow others to dictate about our own self-perception and, in many cases, worth, we are still the stars of our own stories — our own leading men and women. As Elliot rises, another must fall. It’s the circle of life, and we all go through it at some point. (IFC Films, PG-13, 90 minutes) For an interview with Michael Showalter, click here.