Call it "The 40-Year-Old Duffer."

Actor Steve Carell of The Office and The 40-Year-Old Virgin has decided to star in Missing Links, a golf comedy based on Rick Reilly's 1997 novel, according to the Hollywood Reporter's Risky Business blog.

Carell will produce via his Carousel Prods banner, while the company’s Vance DeGeneres and Charlie Hartsock are on board as exec producers. Bobby Cohen (”Revolutionary Road”) is also producing. “The Break-Up” scribe Jay Lavender is writing the screenplay. Greg Silverman will oversee for Warners.

Reilly’s 1997 comedic novel tells of the group of bumblers who, after playing for years at a run-down municipal golf course in a working-class Boston neighborhood, concoct a series of schemes that they hope will lead to them teeing off at a nearby elite club.

I read Reilly's novel a few years ago and Carell fans shouldn't expect a slapstick Happy Gilmore-like comedy. Missing Links is a warm portrayal of a ramshackle muni and its wacky regulars with lots of opportunities for laughs, but the heart of the book is an estranged father-son relationship. In Hollywood terms, think Caddyshack meets Field of Dreams, or "Noonan, I am your father."

Hey, it's gotta be better than The Legend of Bagger Vance, right?

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