In directing his performers using Tom Schulman's screenplay, Donald Petrie sets up a story that's partly analogous to the hypothetical one noted here, yet the differences are telling ones. Petrie is dealing not with New York City but with small-town America, where the office of mayoralty is largely ceremonial and everyone in the village knows and has probably used the plumber who runs the local hardware store as well. The plot centers on an unlikely election campaign between the plumber (who has a dog appropriately named Plunger) and the now-retired ex-president, whose dog is a Westie and who is said to have been the most popular chief executive in history.

"Welcome to Mooseport" could have been a sharp, effective satire, plunging into the waters of compromises and corruptions of the political scene, but Petrie and Schulman either miss the boat or never even intended to dip their feet into the muddy waters. The result: a sitcom which might find a place on network TV, the characters actually hesitating after each joke or comic situation to allow the mild laughs to subside before moving ahead.

Gene Hackman is slumming in this oh-so-slight work as former U.S. President Monroe "Eagle" Cole," whose retirement to a summer home in Mooseport, Maine is modeled after Bill Clinton's retreat to the far richer and more sophisticated community of Chappaqua in New York. When the representative of the thrilled townspeople of Mooseport (actually filmed in Port Perry, Ontario), asks Cole to run for mayor, at first he demurs, but acceeds on the final day for filing when he realizes campaigning for the job would prevent his voracious ex-wife Charlotte (Christine Baranski), already in possession of his urban digs and his boat, from seizing his small-town house as well. Though told he'd be unopposed, he is surprised when the town's plumber, Harold "Handy" Harrison (Ray Romano), files as well. The campaign, which includes two debates in the town hall, gains the attention of the national media.

"Moosehead" is more in the tradition of romantic comedy than political satire. Like Peter Segal's "50 First Dates," the laughs, such as they are, dominate the first part of the story, the sentiment taking over in the conclusion. The usual caricatures are on display, including the dedicated, secretly adoring personal secretary, Grace Sutherland (Marcia Gay Harden); the tough but opportunistic campaign manager, Bert Langdon (Rip Torn); the clueless PR director Bullard (Fred Savage). The one three-dimensional figure with a stellar performance is Maura Tierney in the role of Sally Mannis, the village veterinarian. She's Handy's girlfriend for six years, unable to get a commitment of marriage from the decent, reasonably intelligent but inarticulate guy and therefore determined not to resist the flirtations of the ex-president. (The restaurant date is bound to cause some fluttering in feminist circles, given that Hackman is 72 to Tierney's 38.)

Chalk this one up as an opportunity lost: the cast and crew showing no particular eagerness to raise the level of humor and especially satire beyond the non-prime TV level.