When an independent film premieres at a film festival and fails to gain distribution, it is often seen as a failing of the Hollywood studio system. But sometimes it’s a good thing when a film can’t get a backer. “Looking for Kitty,” opening in theaters today, looks like something that may have benefited from a perpetual hold in funding limbo.

“Looking for Kitty” made its premiere at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival, but took until now to get a release. Combining the director-actor Ed Burns’s biggest storytelling weaknesses with a lackluster plot, it is understandable that the film had trouble finding an investor.

Mr. Burns helped prove the economic viability of small-budget independent film when his breakout hit, 1995’s “Brothers McMullen,” grossed more than $10 million on an initial budget of less than $30,000. But his subsequent films haven’t been nearly as successful (1998’s “No Looking Back” had a budget of $5 million and grossed less than $200,000).

And the delayed release of “Looking for Kitty” must have been most painful for Mr. Burns, who it can only be assumed, would like to forget this project as soon as possible. Much like 2001’s “Sidewalks of New York,” this film attempts to build a heartwarming story around an ensemble cast of misfits in and around New York City.

But unlike “Sidewalks,” which had the unfortunate luck of being released shortly after the attacks of September 11, 2001, the failure of “Kitty” at the box office will be due only to the inherent flaws of the film. “Kitty” may get an initial boost from some of the positive responses to “The Groomsmen,” a Burns film released earlier in the summer. But if “Looking for Kitty” seems like a step backward after that often charming ensemble piece, the only positive sign is that this film was made first. It is to be hoped that Mr. Burns, who once again has written, directed, and starred in his own project, will only continue to improve.

The most exciting thing about this film is the poster, which depicts a woman from the hips down wearing heels and a mini skirt. The image implies a sexy chase for an elusive damsel, but there’s not much that’s sexy about two men drinking coffee outside of buildings in the freezing cold, which is the bulk of the action here.

Mr. Burns plays Jack, a private detective struggling with money problems and a recently deceased wife, who has been hired by Abe (David Krumholtz) to reclaim his missing wife.

A high school baseball coach, Abe, pays extra so he can tag along on the search for his wife, and the reclusive Jack reluctantly agrees. You’ll never guess that this unlikely pair ends up developing a close friendship.

At first, the two rile each other. Jack can’t pronounce Abe’s last name and seems to have something against the name Abe, so he takes to calling him “Coach.” Jack doesn’t like to eat inside, so he makes Coach spend hours in the bitter cold. And since Coach is a rube from the long lost land of Peekskill, he doesn’t have a proper coat.

As in “Sidewalks,” Mr. Burns casts Mr. Krumholtz as a bumbling yokel who irritates when he should be charming. When they find Kitty to be a shallow twit who ran off with a rock star named Ron Stewart (Max Baker), it doesn’t seem much of surprise that she wasn’t such a good match for the sweatpant-clad Abe. If the residents of Peekskill were inclined to sue for defamation of character based on the depiction of this couple, they wouldn’t be entirely in the wrong.

But as with most of his films, Mr. Burns uses the plot as a means of expounding on matters of politics, New York heritage, and religion. Here, Mr. Burns’s Jack is obsessed with the current administration and with showing Abe “holdouts,” his word for small buildings whose owners refused to sell to large development corporations.

As he says, “any time a working man can screw over a rich guy, I’m all for it.” One of the last New York holdouts that he shows Abe is P.J. Clarke’s, now owned by Timothy Hutton and George Steinbrenner. At least with the success he has found in film, Mr. Burns has been able to expand his definition of “working man” to include the occasional movie star and baseball owner.

Like Woody Allen, that other New York-centric filmmaker who often casts himself as the pseudo debonair lead in his films, Mr. Burns has tendencies that can become grating quickly. And although he is usually more adept at getting the girl as the leading man, his success in Hollywood and in life (he’s been married to Christy Turlington since 2003) make it increasingly difficult to picture him as an everyman.

But his achievements haven’t seemed to yield much development in his work. Surely his life since “Brothers McMullen” has taught him something other than Jack’s disenchantment with “this administration”? His juxtaposition of Irish Catholic traditions set against the background of modern day New York City is an interesting cinematic niche, but Mr. Burns needs to incorporate his observations into a storyline more compelling than that in “Looking for Kitty” to make them meaningful.

Though it becomes increasingly difficult to ignore production problems befitting a low budget first-effort in ensuing projects, Mr. Burns can produce some endearing moments of cinema — even if films like this one make it seem like he is trying to overstay his welcome in New York cinema faster than Mr. Allen can say Soon-Yi.