CONTRIVANCES OVERSHADOW `TWILIGHT'.

Byline: Harry Sheehan Orange County Register

A tenuous supposition forms the dubious basis for ersatz moral drama in ``The Twilight of the Golds,'' a movie based on so many ``ifs'' that you wonder if the year's supply of the conjunction has now been exhausted.

The biggest ``if'' revolves around the question of whether homosexuality is a genetic trait that can be detected during the early stages of pregnancy, a question the movie answers with a big ``yes'' just to get under way. Pregnant Suzanne Stein (Jennifer Beals) is married to Dr. Rob Stein (Jon Tenney), a doctor working on a research project on inherited behaviors. Under prodding from his boss, Rob persuades Suzanne to take a test that reveals that their unborn baby boy contains genes that more or less guarantee he'll be gay.

Though there's a certain amount of nuttiness to the idea, the movie becomes instantly somber, as Suzanne and Rob inform their parents, and everyone anguishes over whether an abortion is in order. Rob's Orthodox Jewish dad (Jack Klugman), displaying the most sense of anyone in the movie, gets mad at his son just for looking into the whole thing.

But Suzanne's parents, well-to-do businessman Walter Gold (Garry Marshall) and housewife Phyllis (Faye Dunaway), get all wound up. Suzanne's brother David (Brendan Fraser), as it happens, is gay himself and a constant source of fretfulness for his parents over the insubstantiality of his career (he's an alternative-opera director) and what they perceive as the risks and unconventionality of his love life (though he actually is in a monogamous relationship).

Even loving Suzanne is upset at the memory of the cruelties David had to endure growing up and wonders whether she wants to expose her own child to such vagaries. As for David, he becomes upset at the very idea that an abortion even would be considered on such grounds and enthusiastically jumps on the movie's main metaphor, which, of course, is that aborting the baby would be, in a sense, a way of doing away with him and all gay people.

The sheer number of contrivances on display here torpedoes even the possibility that the movie - directed by Ross Marks from a screenplay by Jonathan Tolins and Seth Bass based on Tolins' play - will get to any purely human issues. Each scene and character is contoured simply to forward a dramatic agenda that itself is based on so many faulty, or at least doubtful premises as to not bear scrutiny.

The performances are surprisingly variable given the various resumes of the cast. Beals plays Suzanne as naturally subdued, but in the process passes by many expressive opportunities; at the other end of the scale, Dunaway falls victim to one of her occasional bouts of overacting. Marshall is good until he gets to his character's ``big moment,'' when credibility flies completely out the window, while the likable Fraser overworks his sensitive side.

THE FACTS

The film: ``Twilight of the Golds'' (not rated; adult subject matter).

The stars: Jennifer Beals, Brendan Fraser, Faye Dunaway and Garry Marshall.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Ross Marks. Screenplay by Jonathan Tolins and Seth Bass, based on Tolins' play. Produced by Paul Colichman, Mark R. Harris and John Davimos.

Running time: One hour, 33 minutes.

Playing: Selected theaters.

Our rating: Two Stars.