So it's no surprise that in "Dr. T & the Women," Robert Altman can't illuminate the phenomenon any more succinctly than we can. Altman's tale of a Dallas gynecologist who loves and is beloved by the fair sex is a comedy with tragic crow's feet, a mad sprawl that tells more than it shows: It gives us myriad pieces of information -- some of it highly emotional information, but information nonetheless -- and asks us to process it with the logic of our hearts.

That's not a bad thing in itself -- hearts are capable of their own logic -- but "Dr. T" just comes off as too haphazard and clinical. There's some gleeful insanity to it, since Altman understands that that's an essential component of any kind of passion, but almost all of the movie's romantic lunacy is too calculated and sly; the picture never quite sweeps us away. And the gentler and subtler aspects of the madness -- a secret love affair, for example -- are left hanging, just on the wrong side of the line between pleasingly muted and disappointingly unexplored. "Dr. T" raises some seductive questions -- among them, when a man says he loves women, just what does he mean, and could such love actually be damaging? -- and mixes them up in a madcap and outlandish blender swirl. Through the murk, it's often hard to see the movie's heart.

Altman's pictures aren't supposed to be neat. You wouldn't expect that from a director who makes movies in which the clatter of language is both sustenance and distraction. In his best films, particularly "Nashville" and the elegiac "McCabe & Mrs. Miller," Altman overlaps dialogue and narrative threads as if they were layers of chiffon, yet instead of mistily blurring his vision, they render it crisply clear.

He hasn't always been able to pull off such slippery feats: His 1993 "Short Cuts" felt choppy and facile, and it was draped with a thin veil of misanthropic grumpiness. That said, though, even when -- or maybe especially when -- Altman isn't really trying too hard, he's capable of fashioning marvelous entertainments like last year's "Cookie's Fortune," a Southern Gothic mystery with both a breezy touch and a bit of bite.

The story follows the sudden unraveling of the happy and organized life of Dr. T (Richard Gere). That life includes a booming gynecological practice and a fine family, consisting of his wife, Kate (Farrah Fawcett), and his two daughters, Connie (Tara Reid) and Dee Dee (Kate Hudson). Altman (working from a script by Anne Rapp) also gives us a host of peripheral characters, almost too many to care about. There's Kate's sister, Peggy (Laura Dern), a tippling Texas belle who, along with her three little girls, has recently moved into Dr. T's house; a trio of Dr. T's male hunting and golf pals, led by the wisecracking Harlan (Robert Hays); Dr. T's tireless and, it turns out, lovesick assistant, Carolyn (Shelley Long); the maid of honor in Dee Dee's impending wedding, Marilyn (Liv Tyler, looking heartbreakingly rosy and radiant); and a new-in-town golf pro named Bree (Helen Hunt), who's more down-to-earth (and wears less makeup) than any other woman in Dr. T's orbit.

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