`THE DAYTRIPPERS' DOES CINEMATIC WONDERS ON A BUDGET.

Byline: Amy Dawes Daily News Film Critic

A charming, slightly neurotic comedy about a family that stands behind one of its own in a time of crisis - and gets a little more adventure than it bargained for - ``The Daytrippers'' is a kind of one-day road movie that makes marvelous creative use of its budgetary constraints.

The directing debut of talented New York filmmaker Greg Mottola, who also wrote the script, ``The Daytrippers'' begins in the Long Island suburbs when daughter Eliza (Hope Davis) finds a love letter apparently written to her husband, Louis (Stanley Tucci), and signed ``Sandy.''

Shaken, she takes the offending page over to her parents' house in a neighboring burg, where younger sister Jo (Parker Posey) and Jo's boyfriend Carl (Liev Schreiber) are having breakfast with the folks.

Whipped into action by Eliza's demonstrative mom (Anne Meara), the whole gang piles into the family station wagon, driven by Dad (Pat McNamara), and heads for the city, where they intend to help Eliza confront Louis and immediately put the troubling issue to rest.

An abbreviated road movie in which the journey goes no further than Manhattan, ``The Daytrippers'' nevertheless maintains that genre's sense of adventure and surprise and its tradition of prolonging a simple quest with tangential episodes.

Louis, who works at a publishing house, is not in when the family arrives, and while waiting, Eliza and Mom find clues to the address of the irksome Sandy, who they presume to be the young woman who's sitting on Louis' lap in a picture they find in his desk drawer.

Meanwhile, Eliza catches the eye of a smart and intriguing young writer (Campbell Scott) hanging out at the publishing house whose flirtatious ways are destined to resurface later.

When Louis doesn't return to work, the family decides to stake out Sandy's Manhattan digs. They spy Louis, but once again he eludes them.

A publishing party that night seems the ideal place to catch up with him again, so the family is forced to while away the long afternoon in Manhattan. During this time, Carl entertains them with chapters from the bizarre political novel he's writing; and a fainting spell leads to a surprise visit with a father and son whose family relationship is even more skewed than theirs.

From a somewhat patchy beginning, Mottola builds a surprisingly involving family tale, deftly directed and beautifully acted by a smart, appealing ensemble cast.

When the ending comes after a brisk 85 minutes, it's raw and powerful, carrying the kind of awful revelation that sends the sensitive Eliza's world spinning around her.

The cast delivers terrific, comic and touching performances all around, and the potent shorthand of their work is particularly impressive given that the movie's shooting schedule left scant room for mistakes or second chances.

Shot in 16 days and completed for a mere $500,000, ``The Daytrippers'' was nearly thwarted from coming to a theater near you by an indifferent film industry. Distributors ignored the finished film for more than a year, until it was selected for the Cannes Film Festival and went on to win a string of awards at Deauville, Athens and Slamdance, the guerrilla offshoot of the Sundance Film Festival.

Now that it's in theaters, the best thing that could happen would be for audiences to surprise the system by getting out and turning this rough-edged gem into a box-office hit.

THE FACTS

The film: ``The Daytrippers'' (not rated).

The stars: Hope Davis, Stanley Tucci, Parker Posey, Liev Schreiber, Anne Meara, Pat McNamara, Campbell Scott.

Behind the scenes: Written and directed by Greg Mottola. Produced by Nancy Tenenbaum and Steven Soderbergh. Released by CFP.

Running time: One hour, 27 minutes.

Playing: AMC Promenade 16, Woodland Hills.

Our rating: Three Stars.

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Photo

Photo: Hope Davis, left, Liev Schreiber and Parker Posey look for a wayward relative in ``The Daytrippers,'' Greg Mottola's directing debut.