Philadelphia.

AIDS has finally made it into mainline Hollywood cinema, and its first appearance has been hooplaed as if it were the Second Coming. Philadelphia was made by Jonathan Demme, whose The Silence of the Lambs was attacked in certain quarters because its murderer was a homosexual and transvestite, and the film was thus thought to be disrespectful to homosexuals, transvestites, and, for all I know, murderers. Unleashed, the minority mentality can sniff out disrespect in more places than a hyperactive dog can buried bones.

As an act of penance, Mr. Demme proceeded to make this Philadelphia, as it is called with heavy irony: the City of Brotherly Love exposed for its lack of fair play, decency, and brotherly love. But the trouble with genuflection is that, whatever its other uses, it is not the right posture for making movies. This one oozes reverence and self-righteousness in equal measure, and pins so many medals on its own chest that you can hardly see the movie beneath them.

It is the story--or such part of it as is deemed housebroken--of Andrew Beckett, a terrific young lawyer in a Philadelphia firm, who comes down with AIDS. He doesn't tell his employers, but when a lesion is spotted on his forehead, he is fired on grossly trumped-up charges of incompetence. He sues the firm, but the only lawyer he can get to represent him is Joe Miller, a black ambulance chaser who crassly promotes his services on TV. A macho man, Joe hates homosexuals; it is only when he happens to see how Andrew is discriminated against even in the reading room of the public library that the connection between discriminations dawns on him.

Already things are a bit too good to be true. What kind of name is Andrew Beckett? A prince or a Carnegie might be Andrew, and a saint or a Nobel laureate might be Beckett, but a lawyer who, on top of that, contracts AIDS? As for the rough-riding Joe Miller, he has a lovely and sagacious wife and a brand new girl baby, and is played by sexy Denzel Washington: clearly, a hustler with a heart of gold, not to mention a helluva head on his shoulders. And it is in a library, that temple of humanistic learning, that Joe sees the pitiful-looking Andrew boning up on the law--he'll have to represent himself--and notices how other readers recoil from him. So Saul becomes Paul.

The film avoids any closer examination of homosexuality, or even AIDS, and hurries to become a courtroom drama, which everyone can have good, wholesome fun with. To be sure, Andrew has a boyfriend, but that is as much as we learn about his lifestyle. Who is this companion, named Miguel Alvafez? He is sort of a painter, and is played by Antonio Banderas, perhaps the hottest of heterosexual Latin lovers on the current screen. It is not clear how he makes his living, where he comes from, or how he met Andrew-Heaven forfend  that the movie should soil its hands with a scene in a gay bar. The relationship between Andrew and Miguel, as shown, could be that between two devoted brothers or, later, a sick man and his empathetic nurse.

Andrew's other relationships are equally sanitized. His loving mother knows all about his illness and is as understanding as his doctor--also a woman. When his father and his siblings and their spouses learn about his condition and lawsuit, they are all models of love, supportiveness, and pride, as if Andrew had received some great but controversial award. He is dandling a tiny niece on his knees as he and his extended family renew, as it were, their familial vows. It never crosses the mind of the dandled child's mother to worry, however supererogatorily, about possible infection, nor does Andrew's crude-looking father utter so much as one ambiguous word. This family reunion could have been painted by Norman Rockwell. Needless to say, they all love Miguel, too.

But what about Andrew's law firm? Well, its patriarch and linchpin, Charles Wheeler, is played by Jason Robards, who specializes in Crusty Old Men, Lovable, but here plays a Crusty Old Man, Hateful. This is good casting, for it proves how vicious even the best and most tailored among us can get when AIDS rears its head. The properly Philadelphian partners are solidly united against Andrew, except for one who wants to be decent, but fear silences his humanity. He is played by the well-known off-off-Broadway actor Ron Vawter, who looks less clean-cut than the rest--midway between stuffy and scruffy, which is how, in the movies, one recognizes incipient humanity in a lawyer.

It is all slide-rule casting. The good mother is the lovable and oh, so liberal Joanne Woodward; the good doctoress is Karen Finley, the performance artist who smears her body with chocolate, and whose NEA grant was revoked and then reinstated. The low-echelon employee who speaks up for Andrew is played by the black performance artist Anna Deavere Smith. Too many noble women and blacks in the film? Mustn't let things look like PC, so the firm is represented by an unnerving woman lawyer (Mary Steenburgen) who, however, mutters at trial's end about how much she hated this case. And one of her legal adjuncts is a black man, but he never gets to say anything, lest he become too heinous.

But why pursue the mathematical ingenuity of the casting down to its least ramifications if the very lead is played by Tom Hanks, Hollywood's Mr. Lovable himself. The only actor who could have made Andrew even cuter is Robin Williams, but he would probably have done something wild along the line, whereas Hanks keeps him dignified all the way, except for a few slight ironic glints. He gives a very good performance, aided also by losing thirty pounds, and by the excellent makeup of Clark Fullerton, which may be the most honest and disturbing element in the entire movie.

I will mention only one more thing, the scene that even unenthusiastic critics have extolled. After Andrew has thrown a flamboyantly gay party (but gay in the manner of the New Orleans carnival), Joe stays on to discuss tomorrow's courtroom strategy with his host. Andrew, however, puts on one of his beloved operatic discs, something the like of which Joe has never heard: Maria Callas singing "La mamma morta" from Giordano's Andrea Chenier. And he proceeds to enlighten, civilize, and spiritually transform the culturally underprivileged Joe.

I find this scene tasteless, patronizing, and offensive. Mr. Demme and his scenarist, Ron Nyswaner, thought they could make Andrew lovable even to macho and black audiences as a fellow who, thanks to his homosexuality, has discovered the treasure trove of opera, and is now sharing his wealth with the less privileged. The scene is dawdled over, bodizened with fancy camera angles, and finally bathed in brazen scarlet light as Andrew dances around with his IV bottle for a partner. Homosexuals, it implies, have something wonderful to impart to the rest of us ignorant slobs. Yet Giordano's opera is one of the worst ever to make it into the standard repertoire, and Miss Callas's rendition is hammy. Andrew's glowingly passionate explication of "La mamma morta" is comparable to someone's spreading literary culture by lecturing on Danielle Steele.

According to Ron Nyswaner, Mr. Demme's motto is, "Let's entertain, and let's be truthful, and let's be bold." Philadelphia does poorly by the first, worse by the second, and miserably by the third.

* In the rush of year's-end blockbusters, it is easy for a small, worthwhile movie to get lost in the shuffle. I don't want to make large claims for Wrestling Ernest Hemingway, a modest little film written by Steve Conrad, 21 when he started work on it. Eschewing alike high adventure and low sex, it is about two antithetical old duffers: Frank, a ribald former sea captain, who claims to have once wrestled Ernest Hemingway; and Walt, a retired, prissy Hispanic barber who idealizes unattainable women. Somehow, the two find friendship in their monotonously sun-drenched sunset days in stifling Saint Petersburg, Florida.

Sure, this is somewhat formulaic: the odd couple that goes from mutual contempt to respect and learning from each other. Meanwhile Frank, a former womanizer, tries pitifully for belated conquests with Georgia, a lonely former belle haunting the same movie house he does; and Helen, the middle-aged manager of the apartment complex in which he has a small flat. Walt, who has not had much luck with women, nurses a pathetic crush on a sweet young waitress, Elaine, who eventually follows a young man out of town but not until she has, for a long time, been the goddess dispensing the same two daily sandwiches to Walt: one to be consumed on the spot, the other later, while he pores over his newspaper on a public bench.

Much in the film remains unanswered, and much may be milked for not undeserved, but slightly facile, sympathy: Frank's desperate attempt to love his unloving son, Walt practicing his ballroom dancing by himself against the day when he will venture to that "big" dance and meet women. And the death of one of the men is turned into a somewhat glib coup de theatre. But much of it is solid stuff: the deadly geriatric loneliness amid green palms and blue waters, the misfiring attempts at sex, the living in memories that are merely fantasies.

Richard Harris is splendid as Frank; Robert Duvall, as Walt, is even better. Sandra Bullock is the last word in warm-hearted waitresses, and Shirley MacLaine gives a fine, tough, humane performance as the wary Helen. Ronda Haines has directed with equal feeling for the place and the people who inhabit these sunny, empty streets leading nowhere. And the great Hungarian cinematographer Lajos Koltai has shot it all with properly bleached-out, yet somehow indomitable colors, For those with not unreasonable expectations, the film holds heartening rewards.