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“Only You’s” insistently romantic crowds oozes lovesick lyricism like cheese from an overstuffed cannoli. A enthralled shoe salesman, Peter Wright (Robert Downey Jr.), embraces swoony schoolteacher Faith Corvatch (Marisa Tomei) as the big pizza pie in the arch raises the question: “That’s amore?”

Director Norman Jewison meant “Only You” to be “Moonstruck” with a heavier Italian accent, but the star-crossed couple are only about half-moonstruck in this stale valentine. Written by Diane Drake, a former industry executive, “Only You” marries fairy tale to movie blueprint. All the standard ingredients have been included, but Drake hasn’t put anything of herself — or if she has, she’s in trouble — into this exercise in the mechanics of ardor.

Though set primarily in Italy — Venice, Rome and Positano exquisitely photographed by Sven Nykvist — the film begins with flashbacks to propitious moments in the heroine’s childhood. As an 11-year-old, Faith asks a Ouija board to spell out the name of the one man who was meant for her. The answer, “Damon Bradley,” is the same one given her by a Gypsy fortuneteller to whom she poses the question three years later.

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Today, just a long weekend away from her marriage to a dull but steadfast podiatrist, Faith halfheartedly celebrates her engagement with two girlfriends. “Did he get down on his knees?” they pry. “No, but he turned down his beeper,” Faith sighs. Like Cher in “Moonstruck” and Meg Ryan in “Sleepless in Seattle,” she is resigned to a future in a cold bed. But suddenly destiny calls.

Actually it’s one of her fiance’s old school chums, who phones his congratulations while changing planes on his way to Italy. His name — yep, Damon Bradley — sends Faith into a frenzy of action. With her beloved sister-in-law Kate (Bonnie Hunt) in tow, Faith high-tails it to Italy in hopes of locating her soul mate. (Given that both suitors work with feet, perhaps that would be sole mate.)

Kate, who is taken for granted by her roofer husband, has a view as cynical as Faith’s is daft and — for all her raving about Plato’s philosophical treatise on love — puerile. Nevertheless, Kate is soon motor-scooting all over Roma with the hand-kissing Giovanni (Joaquim De Almeida).

Faith, meanwhile, sets out to find Damon but just misses him when a melee breaks out at his favorite restaurant. While chasing him across the piazza, she loses a pump and, a la Prince Charming, the visiting Peter picks it up and goes in search of a bare tootsie. Upon learning of the reshod lovely’s quest, the smitten youth pretends to be Mr. Right. During a romantic montage, they find they are meant for each other when in a moment of gratuitous sagacity, they both confess a fondness for the poetry of Rilke. Then she discovers that he’s really Mr. Wright, and high jinks of a farcical nature ensue.

As a road movie of sorts, “Only You” provides a time-filling tour of bucolic Tuscany and the rugged Amalfi coast in addition to noteworthy Roman sights such as the Mouth of Truth. Here Tomei and Downey take a shot at invoking Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in 1953’s “Roman Holiday.” A slight and wooden scene, it brings to mind instead the partnering of Jiminy Cricket and Pinocchio.

Tomei is lovely in her gamin way, but she brings neither weight to the screen nor complexity to the insipidly drawn role of this postmodern Cinderella. Downey, feverish as the infatuated puppy-lover, actually carries the story through to its happy conclusion. Bonnie Hunt brings regret, rage and wit to the role of the underappreciated wife, who despite pie in her eye and a willing Latin lover boy, remains faithful to her husband in Philadelphia. Alas, that’s amore.