You may remember those old ads about not having to be Jewish to enjoy Levy's rye bread. Similarly, you need neither know nor care about ice hockey to have a good time at Mystery, Alaska, a film about a tiny (fictional) Alaskan town that lives mainly for hockey. In the mystique of the game, the townsfolk, as players or fans, experience what theater meant to the ancient Athenians. We, in turn, are treated to, besides the joys of skating, the vicissitudes of small-town life up north, the magnificent mountains in back of the pond that serves as the hockey rink, and the visible breath emerging from mouths, attesting to the authenticity of location shooting, even if the location was Canmore, Alberta, rather than Alaska. After all, ice is smooth, and snow decorative, whatever their nationality.

The screenplay was co-written by two old Princetonians, friends and varsity hockey players. David E. Kelley was captain of the team; became the "creative force" behind such TV series as Picket Fences, Chicago Hope, The Practice, and Ally McBeal; and, to top it all, married Michelle Pfeiffer. Sean O'Byrne has been both an actor and a writing pupil of Kelley's, and 20 years after their graduation still plays hockey with his mentor. The film displays both television-writing skills — in juggling multiple stories with deftness and concision — and true knowledge of the sport. The actors, by the way, had to undergo a rigorous crash course in hockey, and did well.

The director, Jay Roach, best known for his dubious Austin Powers films and previously ignorant of hockey, rises valiantly to the occasion. Part of his achievement is adroit casting of American and Canadian actors, some against type, that paid off handsomely. The virile Australian star of L.A. Confidential, Russell Crowe, plays the stalwart John Biebe, sheriff of Mystery, whose woes include being superseded on the team by a younger player, and jealousy of his faithful wife, Donna, mother of his children, when the weaselly Charles Danner, her high-school beau, comes back to town.

Charles, one of Mystery's few non-skating males, has become a New York sportswriter who conceives the idea of an off-season exhibition game between the gallant home team and the champion New York Rangers, with the former benefiting somewhat from an open field, the pond, to which the Rangers wouldn't be accustomed. When the Rangers try to back out, Pruitt, the unorthodox, roly-poly lawyer, goes to New York to argue the case, with dramatic results for both Mystery and himself.

Before that, he had successfully defended young Stevie, Biebe's replacement on the team. Stevie had semi-inadvertently shot in the foot an advance representative of a megastore that is planning to open a branch in Mystery and thus threatens the small local businesses. Stevie's jailing would have similarly endangered the team's chances against the Rangers. Meanwhile, the town's blowhard mayor catches his wife in flagrante with Skank, the team's skirt-chaser. The stern judge, Walter Burns, a frustrated near-hockey-star of yore, disapproves alike of the intended Rangers game, of his son's wanting to give up school to turn hockey professional, of his young daughter Marla's excessive involvement with Stevie, and of his wife's ever daring to oppose him.

The plot thickens further when Biebe, still aching to play and with no coaching experience, is made to coach the team. He tries to persuade the unwilling Judge Burns, once a school coach, to take over the assignment. This and much more makes for both funny and fraught situations, especially after a sports network and a passel of famous sports figures and journalists descend on Mystery to cover the game. The sundry plot elements are woven cannily into a solid dramatic texture.

Crowe is rough-hewn maleness incarnate, and the now-snowy-haired Burt Reynolds is an imposing patriarch and judge, as the two sometimes oppose, sometimes aid each other. Mary McCormack exudes warmth as the devoted but unjustly suspected Donna, and Rachel Wilson is charming as the inexperienced Marla, who, determined to lose her virginity, makes a riotous attempt at seduction. Each member of the hockey team is pungently portrayed, with Ron Eldard especially good as the randy Skank. There is fine work from the Irish actor Colm Meaney as the alternately blustery and bewildered mayor, Lolita Davidovich as the mayor's all-too-human wife, Maury Chaykin as the hayseed lawyer, and Hank Azaria as the slippery Charles, whose suppressed hometown pride finally takes over.

Peter Deming's cinematography has as many ways of looking at snow as the Eskimos are said to have synonyms for it, and Carter Burwell's music, incorporating some standards, is always apt. But what makes the ultimate difference is the way civic solidarity and sports enthusiasm support each other in a film whose benevolence nicely avoids sappiness.

Lawrence Kasdan's writing and directing credits are numerous and varied, and include such popular successes as Return of the Jedi, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Body Heat, The Big Chill, The Accidental Tourist, and several others. His latest, which, as so often, he both wrote and directed, is

Mumford

, a mild satire on the shrink business and a slightly sophomoric kidding of the follies of small-town life.

Young Dr. Mumford, therapist extraordinaire, arrives in the manicured but miserable little town of Mumford, where both his name and his skill arouse enthusiasm as well as some opposition. He is equally effective with Althea Brockett, a crass tycoon's neglected wife and compulsive shopper; with Sofie Crisp, the divorced and chronic-fatigue-ridden daughter of a termagant mother; with Henry Follett, an overweight and sex-starved druggist harboring Mickey Spillane-ish fantasies; and with Nessa Watkins, a pseudo-sophisticated, tough-acting, confused teenager. And when a would-be patient such as the braggart lawyer Dillard becomes offensive, Mumford just throws him out.

But this Dr. Mumford is as bogus as his name. He is actually a former ruthless IRS investigator and crashed drug addict who has reinvented himself. His strengths are a talent for listening and a curt manner that somehow inspires confidence. Certainly his unorthodox methods pay off. He visits Althea in her home, takes long walks with Sofie, and plays catch with Skip, the young billionaire computer whiz whose Panda Modems are named after his favorite animal, and who buoyantly skateboards through town when not at work inventing a female doll that will be the perfect sexual mate for his repressed self. Not only does Mumford cure his patients, he also finds unlikely but ideal lovers for them.

It is all patent nonsense, but some of it makes for droll viewing, even if Loren Dean's Mumford is too boring, Hope Davis's Sofie too unattractive, and Pruitt Taylor Vince's (Follett's) fantasies, shown as black-and-white sequences, are rather too cutesy takeoffs on genre films. The local therapists, male and female, who, envious of Mumford, join the vengeful lawyer (Martin Short) in unmasking him, are excessively caricatural, though well acted by David Paymer and Jane Adams. Indeed, everyone is either a caricature, a stick figure, or an idealization like Lily, the no-nonsense black counter-woman (Alfre Woodard), a perfect white-liberal cliché. Though she, of course, doesn't need a shrink, only a man, Mumford fixes her up, too — as he does all others (including himself, with one of his patients).

There is one truly funny invention in Mumford, albeit derived from Woody Allen's Zelig, which I won't give away. The rest of the film, in a less gullible and benighted world, you couldn't give away if you wanted to.