They're called “movie stars” for a reason — it’s their remoteness, their unattainability, the fact they're always there yet never fully here. While pleasing to look at, they provide no actual life-sustaining warmth, unless you happen to be feeding a bonfire with back issues of Us magazine.

In “Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!” — a snappily-scripted comedy that gals will love and guys will happily tolerate — Kate Bosworth (last seen catching righteous tubes in “Blue Crush”) plays a small-town check-out clerk who has a close encounter with her favorite star and is temporarily blinded to reason. Watching the movie is like playing Shoots and Ladders with your 5-year-old niece — none of it is remotely challenging, but you can’t help but feel warmly edified by its unabashed girliness all the same.

For starters, the cast is first-rate, and the movie has the potential to be one of those seminal ensemble hits (“The Breakfast Club,” “Dazed and Confused,” “Animal House”) that catapults several young actors to stardom at once. Bosworth (“Wonderland”) is bright, ripe and altogether fruity as Rosalee Futch, a sweet and principled check-out girl at a West Virginian Piggly Wiggly supermarket who is absolutely smitten with Tad Hamilton (Josh Duhamel from “All My Children”), handsome rakehell and Hollywood megastar (think Johnny Knoxville meets Tom Cruise). Rosalee’s line of work is worth noting from a trend-watching perspective — maybe supermarket retail will be this decade’s cinematic job of choice for romantic heroines, replacing the 1990s magazine editor and the 80s-era jilted psychobitch.

Determined to repair his damaged reputation as Hollywood’s “boy next door,” Tad’s agent (Nathan Lane) and business manager (Sean Hayes from “Will & Grace,” playing it straight) convince the actor to offer himself up as a prize in a national charity drive, which Rosalee wins, naturally. Fellow check-out girl and best gal pal Cathy (Ginnifer Goodwin from “Mona Lisa Smile”) is thrilled for her, but not her other best friend, Pete (Topher Grace from “That 70s Show”), the competent and ambitious assistant manager who, unbeknowest to Rosalee, has always been deeply, silently in love with her.

What follows is a farm fed, "Sweet Home Alabama"-style romantic dilemma. On their date, Tad is impressed by Rosalee’s self-possession and upright morals — so impressed, in fact, that he visits her in West Virginia, both to woo her and to prove to himself that he’s not the shallow, pampered lout that he sees in the bathroom mirror every morning after bedding random supermodels. Meanwhile, Pete seethes, convinced that the taller, richer, handsomer Tad is after Rosalee purely for her “carnal treasures.” Inevitably, Rosalee will have to choose from this embarassment of manly riches.

To reiterate: not the most staggeringly original premise ever, but director Robert Luketic (“Legally Blonde”) and screenwriter Victor Levin — a former staffer on TV’s "Mad About You" — make the best of it, fashioning funny, unprocessed dialogue and filling the supporting roles with talented character actors. Gary Cole (“Office Space") is a hoot as Rosalee’s laid-back father, the kind of positive-minded parental cheerleader who brushes up on Hollywood insider gossip so he and Tad have something to talk about while Rosalee fixes her hair.

Daytime TV star Duhamel smoothly makes the transition from soap scum to movie star, playing a celebrity god who, conversely, feels spiritually crippled by privilege. "I want some of that to rub off on me," Tad tells Rosalee, referring to her farm-fresh, down-home wholesomeness. It's sort of pathetic, actually, but something — and I'm just speculating, here — that real-life movie stars probably struggle with all the time.

Though "Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!" lacks the rarified British polish of "Notting Hill" — another movie about movie stars and real people falling in love — it offers a less constricted and more honest glimpse into the celebrity psyche. C'mon, now — does anybody really believe that Julia Roberts, underneath it all, is really just an even-tempered girl looking for a nice guy who can make her laugh?

In fact, the filmmakers go a step further, and leave us with the moral that gods and mortals aren't really destined to mix in the first place. Star-gazing, they seem to say, is an activity best undertaken from afar.