Love! Valor! Compassion!

Stage director Joe Mantello steps from behind the curtain to behind the camera to adapt Terrence McNally's Tony Award-winning play for the screen. Populated by the original cast (except for Seinfeld's Jason Alexander in the Nathan Lane role), the film soaps up like a cloyingly sentimental episode of The Real World in which all the housemates are gay.

The predictably contentious ensemble gathers for three weekends to knock about the home of a bland choreographer (Stephen Bogardus) and his blind lover (Justin Kirk). In fact, their interactions are so prickly, it's a marvel everyone keeps coming back. The guests include a wise-acre twinkle-toes living with AIDS (Alexander), a longtime couple (Stephen Spinella and John Benjamin Hickey), a misanthropic Brit (John Glover), and an arrogant Latino dancer (Randy Becker). Later, the group is brightened by the Brit's tenderhearted twin (Glover in ridiculous Patty Duke mode), who's also fighting AIDS.

The film joins a refreshing crop of recent releases (Chasing Amy, Boys Life 2) that portray gay relations with directness and multidimensionality. But the saga is not just for boys who like boys; it ambitiously plumbs the universal themes of mortality, love, and friendship. As for the buzz about the exposure of balls and bums, let's just say Seinfeld will never be the same again.

Mantello, however, doesn't shed his theatrical roots as easily as his characters shed their clothes. The result is two hours of stagy, self-conscious "Moments" served up either sun-dappled or moonlit, and cut with the occasional shot of melodrama. Nudging the film over the edge is Bogardus's Mr. Rogers-esque voiceover and a soundtrack reminiscent of "Deep Thoughts with Jack Handey." Although the adaptation delivers on its title's exclamatory promises, it unfortunately also becomes Long! Vapid! Contrived! Opens Friday at the Avon.

-- Alicia Potter