If you're going to get lost -- and I do mean lost -- you might as well have entertaining companions or tour guides along the way.

		'A Love Song for Bobby Long' Rating: R for language, including some sexual references. Starring: John Travolta, Scarlett Johansson, Gabriel Macht. Director: Shainee Gabel

And "A Love Song for Bobby Long" is one meandering, messy tale populated by three strong actors: a white-haired John Travolta (who gets to booze, flirt, dance, smoke, sob, spin stories, sing and play the guitar), Scarlett Johansson and Gabriel Macht.

They are the finest assets of writer-director Shainee Gabel who, with Kristin Hahn, made the 1997 documentary "Anthem," about the American Dream.

Young filmmakers might define the American Dream as landing Travolta and Johansson for your movie and adapting an unpublished Ronald Everett Capps novel called "Off Magazine Street." That's a big bite of the apple, and Gabel chokes on the screenplay, which has one of those maddening conclusions that makes little sense but drips with sentiment and sentimentality.

The story opens with the New Orleans funeral of a singer whose death serves as the catalyst for a band of misfits to form an oddball family of sorts. Aimless teen Purslane Will (Johansson), living with her boyfriend in a trailer in Panama City, Fla., misses her estranged mother's service -- through no fault of her own -- but arrives to claim her house.

It's a ramshackle place in need of an extreme makeover, but it's home, Pursy discovers, to a pair of alcoholics, one a former English professor named Bobby Long (Travolta) and his protege, Lawson Pines (Macht), who is writing a novel about his mentor. Their ability to quote the notables -- Robert Frost, George Sand, Moliere -- has withstood a years-long assault on their brain cells by beer, gin, vodka, whiskey and whatnot.

Welcome to misfit central, where bright, mature Pursy discovers two educational champions, and she tries to get them to clean up their acts, not to mention their grimy kitchen. Along the way, we get an overflowing dose of revelations about how they came to occupy a building as broken as their own lives and dreams, plus recriminations and redemption.

Pursy proves herself worthy of her given name of Purslane, after the stubborn weed that bears small yellow flowers that open only in the sun. As a neighbor tells her, just because dandelions are weeds "doesn't stop kids from making wishes" on them.

"A Love Song" oozes atmosphere, from the grassy fields to the outdoor encampment for vagabonds, storytellers, musicians and drinkers. Johansson, as yet another pouty girl-woman, continues her winning streak, while Macht's Lawson is weirdly dutiful, although he's given a girlfriend (Deborah Kara Unger) so we don't get the wrong idea about his relationship with his mentor.

Unshackled from the role of action hero, Travolta not only acts but occasionally overacts as a man who once had a storied career but now just has stories told in an accent that comes and goes like a summer breeze.

But he and his co-stars are mired in a project that needed a script doctor. Stat! I could live with the idea that Bobby and Lawson somehow manage to keep themselves in cigarettes and booze without any visible means of support, but "A Love Song" hits a flat note with developments that are as manipulative as they are unbelievable or, perhaps, predictable.

In the end, a beautiful flowering weed is still ... a weed.