Despite the title "Breakin' all the Rules," Daniel Taplitz's pet project follows all the rules of romantic comedy, from mistaken identity to tolerated lies to the inevitable happy ending. Screen Gems should have stuck to the original title, "The Breakup Handbook," which more accurately sums up the story.

		'Breakin' All the Rules' Rating: PG-13 for sexual material, humor and language. Starring: Jamie Foxx, Bianca Lawson. Director: Daniel Taplitz.

Once you get past Taplitz's formulaic approach to screenwriting and directing, "Breakin' all the Rules" is a perfect vehicle for the kind of down-on-his-luck dramatic-comedy character that makes Jamie Foxx a star.

Foxx plays a magazine editor who is simultaneously dumped by his girlfriend and summoned by his boss to write up instructions on the best way to fire 15 of his colleagues. Depressed and miserable, he has a catharsis: A romantic breakup is getting fired, and his work assignment and love letter morph into a manual on the best ways to leave your lover.

Taplitz awkwardly makes the breakup-firing linkage, but once the premise is set the romantic comedy wheels start turning. With his wannabe cool persona, Foxx has enough chops to carry a light comedy. Gabrielle Union, Entertainment Weekly's "It Girl," is funny, smart and sexy as Foxx's love interest, and Morris Chestnut is occasionally believable as a horndog playa. Peter MacNicol and Jennifer Esposito make the best of their roles as an unlikely couple whose impending breakup complicates Foxx's inevitable hookup.

Taplitz attempts to skew the film for urban audiences with lots of hip-hop beats and street savvy, but the mainstream script never fits snugly into that niche. It's a marginally funny film for anyone who flips over romantic comedies.