Overall, “Kids Are All Right” is well-conceived

Comedians have long argued that gay marriage should be legalized on the grounds that homosexuals deserve to be as miserable as the rest of us.

"The Kids Are All Right" is a movie loosely built around that joke, featuring Julianne Moore and Annette Bening as a couple in their cranky second decade, daily re-enacting longstanding domestic feuds, and enduring the studied disdain of their two teenage kids.

Writer-director Lisa Cholodenko has no interest in making pushover Jules (Moore) and the bossy Nic (Bening) poster gals for model gay marriage. Their foibles make them funny and familiar, but not necessary likable. They have, for instance, named their son Laser.

"Sue" might have been more merciful. So, perhaps in a quiet act of aggression, Laser (kid star Josh Hutcherson, maturing nicely as an actor) decides on his 16th birthday to seek the indentity of the man who donated the sperm that made him, well, conceivable.

He has the backing of older, college-bound sister Joni (Mia Wasikowska), who also seems to harbor some chronic grudge against her folks.

The two undertake this mission behind the backs of their parents, and they cannot be blind as to how it will make mom and mom feel. Just one bauble from the movie's treasure chest of passive-aggressive behavior, generally presented by Cholodenko as comedy (recalling the better scenes in "Laurel Canyon").

The children compound their betrayal by meeting and befriending the man, an ingratiating uber-dude played by ingratiating uber-dude Mark Ruffalo. As Paul, he's a comic embodiemnt of the properly cool L.A. male in his final stage of evolution - an organic restaurateur who rides his motorcycle to and fro, from organic garden to Tuscan kitchen.

When the children finally bring Paul to meet the other parents, the movie gets laughs as the suspicious, affronted Nic looks for reasons to hate the guy (like threatening to punch the next person who professes to love heirloom tomatoes.)

And although Nic never says it out loud, reason one is that Paul is dangerously straight, a condition rife with possibility, most of which are explored in the Cholodenko's fearlessly adventurous script (co-written by Stuart Blumberg).

Ruffalo, though, may destabilize not only the family but the movie. It's his best work since "You Can Count On Me," and he's at his most likable here, in part because his character's influence on the family is often positive. He helps Jules prepare for an empty-nest life by boosting her flagging midlife self-confidence. Paul also helps Laser get out of a creepy peer relationship, one that the boy's mothers have misidentified.

It's brave of Cholodenko to suggest here that boys, especially teens, can benefit from the close supervision and guidance of an adult male (insofar as Paul qualifies).

This is one of many reasons "Kids" has been receiving ecstatic reviews, and looms as an early Oscar contender, certain to yield an acting nomination from the pool including Moore, Ruffalo and Bening.

But I'm with a few mild dissenters who feel that "Kids" creates a funny/compassionate tone that it abruptly abandons when it comes time to decide, once and for all, how to deal with Paul.

His resolution feels forced and judgmental, as does some of the narrative groundwork leading up to it. It's one thing for Paul to be smitten by sudden fatherhood, quite another to dismiss the advantages of bachelorhood, as happens when he suddenly ends a very agreeable relationship with a gorgeous waitress.

She's played by the fantastically beautiful Yaya DaCosta, and when she makes Paul an offer he can't refuse, and he refuses, the first cracks appear in the movie's credibility.