So there was this priest and a rabbi playing basketball. The rabbi turns to the priest and says, “I’m in love” and the priest says “Hey, I love her too.”

Sounds like a bad bar joke, right?

In Keeping the Faith that’s not quite the case.

Playwright, Stuart Blumberg, took notice of all the rabbi-priest jokes he had heard over drinks and decided that a cheesy joke could be transformed into a worthwhile comedy about priests, rabbi and love triangles.

As director, Edward Norton’s keen sense of humor runs rampant via cleverly constructed quips which appear at every turn the movie takes. At times the satire is so slight it by-passes even the most attentive movie viewer.

The movie opens as Fr. Brian Kilkenny Finn (Edward Norton) stumbles about the streets of New York’s Upper West Side, mourning his lost love.

He finds himself at a asking the bartender for advice, and at this point the story begins.

With a crinkled, yellowed photograph of three smiling, scrawny teen-agers, Finn flashes back to his junior high days and the origins of his drunken state.

Together Fr. Finn, Rabbi Jake Schram (Ben Stiller) and Anna Reily (Jenna Elfman) formed an inseparable threesome. They did everything together until the day Anna moved away.

Now a twosome, Jake and Brian continued to torment the city as their interest in each other’s religion grows.

The inevitable happens they grow-up and become religious leaders of their respective faiths. Brian and Jake return to New York from seminary a priest and a rabbi with an ambitious plan to inspire the inner city.

From meager beginnings, their youthful charisma and sense of humor draw a congregation out of the alleys.Life is grand. How can it not be for a rabbi and priest code-named The God Squad?

Then Anna returns to New York a successful and beautiful businesswoman, and wants to hang out with the grown up boys from junior high. When Anna steps off the jetway, their mouths drop open as they hold a sign for “Banana Anna.”

The threesome is back in town creating havoc in the neighborhood. Anna discovers the inspiring nature of her religious amigos and reconnects with her long-lost friends.

The big dilemma of time is Jake’s bachelor status.

A single, young rabbi in a temple is the equivalent of fresh meat for Jewish mothers with young, available daughters.

Through a series of bad dates, Jake begins to feel as if he is destined to be a single rabbi for eternity. Never fear, Anna’s near.

Chemistry explodes between the two friends and a secret love affair soon emerges. But wait, there’s a problem with this perfectly scripted fairy-tale romance, Anna’s not Jewish and Jake’s mother, Oscar winner Anne Bancroft, and the congregation will not approve.

And to add to the complication, celibate Fr. Brian loves Anna too. Now, the components for the classic love triangle are in place. And what’s a love triangle without chaos?

Jake and Anna decide to have a pretend relationship so that they don’t ever have to worry about saying goodbye. Their plan of course backfires as the two fall hopelessly in love. Anna realizes that what she has with Jake is really the only thing that matters, not her job as she previously thought.

Jake unfortunately gets so caught up in his mother’s and his congregations approval that he ends up hurting the one woman he has spent his life searching for.

It’s time for Brian to enter the triangle. All it takes is a distraught Anna on the phone requesting Brian’s company.

The answer to the triangle lies not in love however but in faith.

The trailer, “If you have to believe in something, why not believe in love”, takes faith and misleadingly intertwines it with love.

In actuality, Keeping the Faith, captures the story of a priest and a rabbi testing and redefining their faith, rather than a love story perhaps it should be.

As a first time director and priest, Edward Norton does a fine job of showing the importance and necessity of faith in today’s world.