`OPPOSITE OF SEX' CLEVER, WELL-ACTED.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

Genuinely clever enough to overcome its gimmickiness, ``The Opposite of Sex'' is the latest in a strange recent series of low-rent ``Lolitas.''

The real thing, Adrian Lyne's adaptation of Nabokov's classic novel, has been relegated to a cable TV slot later this summer after years of fruitlessly searching for an American distributor. But if the subject of pedophilia is what's keeping ``Lolita'' out of theaters, someone was really asleep at the switch when ``Opposite of Sex'' got loose.

Maybe this film is considered more audience-appropriate because it's told from an empowered nymphet's point of view (except, during sloppy bits of story construction, when it's not). Our narrator, 16-year-old bundle of fun Dedee Truitt (Christina Ricci), is a manipulator par excellence, already way ahead of the boys in her boring Louisiana town.

And way ahead of her supposedly, comparatively sophisticated adult half-brother Bill (Martin Donovan), as well. He's a well-heeled, gay Indiana schoolteacher whom she moves in with after some kind of fight with her stupid mother. Within days, Dedee has seduced Bill's apparently not-so-gay lover Matt (Ivan Sergei), convinced him she's pregnant and made him take her away to Hollywood.

Betrayed, devastated and faced with a false charge of molestation by a former, also gay student (Johnny Galecki), Bill has only the sexually repressed sister, Lucia (Lisa Kudrow), of his dead previous boyfriend to turn to for moral support. The sensitive local sheriff Carl (Lyle Lovett) has eyes for the downdy Lucia, but she's only, hopelessly interested in Bill.

Anyway, they and a few other characters all wind up chasing Dedee to California and then up to Canada. There's some violence, a murder and lots of deceptions, most of them engineered by the wise-and-cynical-beyond-her-years woman-child.

This overcomplicated menage a oy is, of course, a comedy, and sometimes a pretty funny one. Its insights into love's frustrations and absurdities, however, too often are voiced by heartless juvenile Dedee and virtual virgin Lucia, so they don't exactly ring with emotionally experienced authority.

As in writer and debuting director Don Roos' previous screenplays for ``Single White Female'' and ``Boys on the Side,'' the dialogue and situations here have an overdetermined quality that subtract from whatever honest insights the film possesses.

Still, ``Opposite of Sex'' is unfailingly clever, uniformly well-acted and mildly daring throughout. And probably, in this alarmist day and age, it's to Roos' advantage that the finer literary gifts that make ``Lolita'' such a genuine human comedy elude him.

THE FACTS

The film: ``The Opposite of Sex'' (R; sex, language, violence).

The stars: Christina Ricci, Martin Donovan, Lisa Kudrow, Johnny Galecki, Lyle Lovett, Ivan Sergei.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Don Roos. Produced by David Kirkpatrick and Michael Besman. Released by Sony Pictures Classics.

Running time: One hour, 41 minutes.

Playing: Town Center 5, Encino; Esquire, Pasadena; Sunset 5, West Hollywood; Monica, Santa Monica.

Our rating: Three Stars.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

Photo: Nymphet Dedee Truitt (Christina Ricci) eventually seduces the not-so-gay-after-all Matt (Ivan Sergei) in ``The Opposite of Sex.''