Bandits has managed to rob you of any desire to quibble and question. This sometimes stilted hodgepodge of comedy, romance, scenery, tunes, charming characters, bits stolen from lots of other movies and genial lollygagging easily manages to steal your heart.

As Bandits opens, Joe Blake and Terry Collins (Bruce Willis and Billy Bob Thornton, respectively) are trapped inside a bank, surrounded by police and arguing about how they ended up in such a desperate situation. They blame “that woman” and each other.

We have already been told that Joe and Terry are the most successful bank robbers in U.S. history and that they are known as the “sleep over” bandits. Comedian Bobby Slayton, using his stocky John Walsh-like looks and tough-guy voice plays a John Walsh-like guy, Darren Head, a crime show host who provides voiceover narrative and running media commentary throughout. He frames their story which plays out in flashback.

We begin at the end, talking about Joe and Terry in the past tense. But there is hardly reason to worry. Bandits lavishes warmth and whimsy on everything in sight. It never feels like a credible threat that Joe and Terry are going out in a hail of bullets like Butch and Sundance or Bonnie and Clyde, despite Bandits’ frequent homages to both pictures and other blunt hints, like stranding them in a bank called the Alamo.

Bandits is so intent on making its heroes likable that very early on Joe and Terry patiently explain that since the money they steal is insured by the FDIC, nobody is getting hurt. Bonnie and Clyde had the luxury of a very real injustice between the banks and the people the banks had hurt. Bandits needs this bit of explanation to keep everybody smiling.

The ballad of Joe and Terry begins in earnest with their escape from prison, a really fun burst of business. Joe steals a cement mixer. Terry jumps on board. With the other inmates cheering, they bust out with bravado and lots of entertaining crashing and smashing. The prison is in Washington State, and Bandits, which is beautifully photographed by the very talented Dante Spinotti, is an inviting travelogue of the West Coast, from Washington through Oregon to California.

As they relax in their newfound freedom, Joe begins to talk Terry into the idea of moving to Mexico, buying a hotel and club and adopting a life of

“margaritas and sunsets.” At first Terry is reluctant. He has “sanitation issues.” Thornton is an entertainingly twitchy hypochondriac throughout.

But Joe sells him on the idea. Willis employs the smug, pushy charm that made him famous in “Moonlighting.” He’s quite a salesman. He could sell you on any idea, except maybe that hair will ever grow on the top of his head.

Joe brings the vision, and Terry provides the means to their end. Terry devises the scheme of kidnapping the bank manager the night before the robbery. Then in the morning, without the presence of customers and too many employees, getting the money out will be more hassle-free.

Step one is picking up Joe’s cousin, a wannabe stunt man named Pollard (Troy Garity) as their wheel man. He also buys the “disguises” the guys wear. These start out as fairly elaborate costumes with outrageous hair pieces. Long after the costumes have subsided, the hair pieces live on.

Their first robbery goes very successfully, and the family pad they crash in the night before includes a nice family dinner and the kind of banter Levinson does so well. With one family dinner, the basic goodness of Joe and Terry is firmly established. After the robbery, the bandits split up for a few weeks to keep the authorities confused. During this hiatus, Joe flushes his loot on fun and Terry picks up Kate.

Kate is a frustrated, bored, very sad housewife who is being treated like a piece of furniture by her workaholic husband. Cate Blanchett, swallowing her natural accent, makes Kate quite a piece of work, not very winning in her first scene lip-synching to Bonnie Tyler, but funnier, smarter and more appealing the more she’s in the picture. “Kate is an iceberg waiting for the Titanic,” fumes Terry, at first. But Kate and Joe spark at first sight, so Kate can stay.

Bandits has an old-fashioned sexiness. The first kiss and clinch between Cate and Bruce, after the curtain comes down a la It Happened One Night, is much more convincing than most Hollywood “love” scenes, which

often err by trying to hard either to be “hot” or “romantic.” There’s not too much flesh or grunting in Bandits, nothing to violate the PG-13 rating (the teenagers Joe and Terry interrupt are sweatier than the stars), but the love scenes look fun, mutually fun. There’s no strict adherence to the one-foot-on-the-floor Hays Code here, but nothing less than comic passes between our lovers.

After another job that doesn’t end as planned, Kate ends up with Terry for the two-week hiatus. And they fall in neurosis with each other. Then Bandits careens off in the direction of Jules and Jim for awhile before getting back to bank robbing to tie up loose ends and send everyone home happy. Though they are sometimes acting not quite with or at each other, Bandits allows all three principal actors to strut their stuff.

At moments, the unevenness of Bandits kind of dares you not to like it, but it is not a bet I would take.