There are exactly two reasons to see the plodding Loggerheads, and they're both wonderful actresses who deserve good roles: Tess Harper (Tender Mercies) and Bonnie Hunt (Jumanji). Unfortunately, their tidy work doesn't lift this gay-themed movie, written and directed by Tim Kirkman, above itself.

North Carolina native Kirkman starts out promisingly in this independent festival favorite, spinning a simple web of human relationships that pushes, then pulls, at the heartstrings, though not too strongly. His is the story of several lost, wounded or struggling souls, whose fates are mysteriously intertwined through a young, blue-eyed bum (Undiscovered's Kip Pardue) with a fondness for the loggerhead turtle.

He sleeps on a beach in North Carolina, silently watching over the turtles and serving as the catalyst for Kirkman's exploration into other people's business. Tess Harper still takes charge of the screen with her blue eyes as a preacher's wife whose preoccupation with a secret almost causes her to run over one of the neighbor kids. Bothered when a neighbor (Ann Owens Pierce) puts a reproduction of Michelangelo's David on display, convinced that the new neighbors are a same sex couple, she flirts with casting the first stone but something holds her back. Chris Sarandon (Fright Night) portrays her husband, the town preacher.

Bonnie Hunt, looking better with every role, plays a car rental cashier with a secret of her own—Michael Learned (the mother in CBS' The Waltons) plays her mother—and Michael Kelly (Dawn of the Dead) is a friend to the beach bum. Never mind how the homosexuality comes into play; it does and, as the movie's title suggests, everything collides, but it's better left unsaid. Part of the problem (the other part is the beach guy's vague characterization) is in Loggerheads' saying and showing.

Kirkman draws his circle in the sand slowly and with characters who are interesting (if not quite realistic), not merely anti-gay southern caricatures. He depicts bigotry as irrational and insidious, which is an effective dramatic tool and, given the grey, grainy feel of the picture, it's not surprising when the stories merge and become tragic.

But what happens—in the poorly framed context of the 2000 Presidential election—is also not clear, let alone convincing and, worse, it's a trick. While the passage of time is intentionally fuzzy throughout the movie, unloading these slow poke plot points with a made-for-television movie flair sells the audience, the subject and the actors short. Other problems include Hunt's and Learned's mother-daughter clashes, which ring as false as the notion that someone as reasonable as Hunt could be on the brink of losing it.

Harper's character is more believable, though she, too, suffers from a script that's less astute at what it says about mothers, sons and tolerance in the South than how it says it. Thankfully, Loggerheads is not, say, another pornographic exploitation of gays—Michael Kelly's character steers clear of the vulgar stereotype—and some finely made, soft scenes occur during the movie's first half or so.

In one of them, Hunt's middle-aged woman—still living with her mother, still working the cash register and still driving a beater—looks longingly over the mountains while the wind caresses her hair. It's as though Kirkman, with his waves, turtles and green Carolina mountains, proposes making peace with the nature of the choices we've made. With a strong cast, but only bits of a good story, his movie ends up subsiding in its own murky waters.