Big-screen sitcoms in the guise of big-screen romantic comedies are becoming as common as Coke on a theater floor. And that's especially true of movie vehicles for the stars of TV's "Friends."

Last year we had "She's the One" with Jennifer Aniston, "The Pallbearer" with David Schwimmer, and "Ed" with Matt LeBlanc. (Hey, "Ed" had its romantic comedy elements.) They had something else in common as well. Each one bombed at the box office.

And now comes "Fools Rush In" with Matthew Perry, and it's apparent that no one has learned a thing.

The twist here is that "Fools" is an interracial romantic comedy. On one side we have an irreligious white-bread Presbyterian New Yorker who is quite distant from his parents. And on the other a hot-blooded Mexican Catholic waitress and aspiring photographer who is very close to her very large family. The by-the-numbers screenplay is apparently from Stereotypes-R-Us.

Perry plays a hotshot workaholic world traveler, climbing the corporate ladder in a company that designs and builds nightclubs. His latest assignment takes him to Las Vegas.

Hayek is an independent young woman who has just left Mexico and settled in Vegas, where most of her family already lives. She works in a casino but dreams of publishing a book of photographs she has taken in the Nevada desert. She has just broken up with her longtime boyfriend, a highway patrolman who is good buddies with her five brothers.

Perry and Hayek meet at a Vegas club, get drunk and enjoy a one-night stand. The next morning, she disappears. Three months later, Hayek shows up on Perry's doorstep and announces she is pregnant. Perry is taken aback but claims that he's been trying to find her ever since their night together.

So, Hayek takes Perry to a family party, where he is intimidated by her parents, brothers, cousins, aunts and uncles. That night, they impulsively get married. (With an Elvis impersonator in attendance, natch.)

At this point, the culture-clash "fun" begins — as when, at the party, Perry is introduced to Hayek's old boyfriend, "Chuy."

Perry says, "Chewie — Luke Skywaker, how are you?"

Perry and Hayek are appealing enough, though there isn't much heat between them. And they're certainly game, taking dialogue that could be much worse and giving it a personable spin. At one point, Perry says to Hayek, "You are everything I never knew I always wanted!"

And the rest of the players are OK, the most recognizable being Jon Tenney as Perry's best friend and co-worker, and Jill Clayburgh, who puts in an extended cameo as Perry's mother.

But the sentimental script and pedestrian direction are without distinction. Music video-transitions abound, three of them with Elvis Presley songs (it's Las Vegas, after all). And the comedy is soft, waffling between tired one-liners and the promise of frantic farce that never quite materializes. The jokes are also largely recycled and predictable. (Late in the film, when Perry, in a drunken stupor, says, "Lucy — you got some 'splainin' to do," they lost me for good.)

The lasting impression is that instead of making TV-star movies bigger to accommodate the big screen, they are made smaller to accommodate the video afterlife.

"Fools Rush In" is rated PG-13 for profanity, vulgarity and sex.