The City of Brotherly Love is the setting for the quirky romantic comedy “The Answer Man.”

Jeff Daniels stars as an urban hermit named Arlen Faber. In 1988, Arlen published a hugely best-selling book called “Me & God.” Based on his supposedly true one-on-one chat with God, Arlen asked God tons of questions and wrote down all of the answers God gave him.

The success of the book turned into a curse when the entire world turned to Arlen for answers and advice. Unable to solve anyone’s problems, Arlen shut himself off from society.

Of course, Arlen never spoke to God and is bitter about not having any answers–especially with regard to his father’s slow death from Alzheimer’s Disease.

When his back goes out of whack, he is reconnected to the world through a chiropractor named Elizabeth (Lauren Graham) who has never heard of him. She’s a single mom struggling with why her husband abandoned her and their son. She has questions and conflicts like everyone else, but she doesn’t look to Arlen for the answers. She just perseveres. He’s intrigued by her. And eventually she becomes interested in him.

Meanwhile, a struggling bookstore owner named Kris (Lou Taylor Pucci), who is fresh out of rehab for alcoholism, has an ongoing dispute with Arlen. When Kris discovers Arlen’s address, he works out a scheme to resolve their dispute by having Arlen answer questions for Kris to help him with rehab. Arlen hates answering questions but is trapped into agreeing.

Both Elizabeth and Kris begin to draw him out of his shell, and he begins to help them just as much.

In all, this is a touching little movie. At its core are people desperately searching for the answers to questions that seem to be driving them to the brink of insanity. The humor stems mostly from Arlen’s chasing his own tail. Considered an expert by everybody else, he can barely handle his own life. It is a plot device that seems to date back to the ancient Greeks, but it still works.

Elizabeth and Kris are more sincere in their problems and roles, but by not playing it straight, their characters would be trivialized. The age difference between Daniels and Graham isn’t as distracting as one might think. In many ways it works well, as it did for Helen Hunt and Jack Nicholson in “As Good as it Gets.”

There are some bumpy parts in the script or editing, where the viewer has to make a few leaps of faith without deeper explanation in the storytelling, but there aren’t many. It is good for rainy afternoon or a quiet weekend with someone special.