QUIRKY CHARACTERS `CASTLE'S' FOUNDATION.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

The Kerrigans are not the brightest bulbs in Cooloroo, Australia. But happily for them - and us - they don't know that.

``The Castle'' is the most impossible kind of comedy to pull off, one in which you can't stop laughing at the protagonists while laughing with them. Maintaining a tone of what can only be called affectionate facetiousness from beginning to end, it's a movie that likes to have at its flakes and fete them, too.

The Kerrigans are a close-knit, self-satisfied clan who couldn't be cozier in their ramshackle house on the edge of an airport. They're not merely oblivious to plane noise, they appreciate it, much as Darryl (Michael Caton), the tow truck-driving patriarch, finds standing under the high-tension wires that also flank his property a good place to think.

Darryl loves the two slacker sons he has at home and the one he has in jail, the big-haired wife (Anne Tenney) who he thinks is a gourmet cook with ketchup and the just-married, bigger-haired daughter (Sophie Lee), who's done him prouder than a man could be by graduating from beautician school. They lead a full, to them deliriously magical life scanning newspapers for secondhand bargains and watching ``Best of Funniest Home Videos'' as a group.

But then the unthinkable happens. Their aluminum-sided Eden is threatened with ``compulsory acquisition,'' being bought and torn down by a government-backed corporation that wants to expand the airport.

Well, Darryl Kerrigan gives up his family's castle for no one, even if he and the idiot lawyer (Tiriel Mora, hilariously disorganized) who lost his son's case have to fight all the way to Australia's Supreme Court.

``The Castle'' was written by a TV comedy outfit that calls itself Working Dog and directed by one of its members, Rob Sitch. They have a great way of championing hokey homilies - home, family, little guy, honor - while suggesting that it takes a certain dogged innocence to actually live those values to the fullest.

The Dogs also have a great sense of comic repetition. Characters constantly say whatever someone else just said, thereby revealing both their mental density and, through different inflections, emotional dimensions that they otherwise couldn't articulate. It sounds like a cheap way to get laughs, but there's genius in how they keep the ploy fresh through the whole movie.

Caton is outstanding as a man who can't imagine anything beyond the dingo perfection of his goofy world. He is, in his way, the classic Australian individualist, just not one equipped with Crocodile Dundee's mental capacities. There's a desperation to his quest that's truly poignant; you can't imagine him surviving, much less thriving as he does, anywhere but home.

Of course, the film is designed to get you totally on the Kerrigans' side. They're good, righteous people, after all, and they're fighting a real injustice. But ``The Castle's'' sly brilliance lies in the way it convinces you they belong together in the home of their choice - and not, thankfully, in yours.

The facts

The film: ``The Castle'' (R; language).

The stars: Michael Caton, Anne Tenney, Stephen Curry, Anthony Simcoe, Sophie Lee, Tiriel Mora.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Rob Sitch. Written by Sitch, Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner and Jane Kennedy. Produced by Debra Choate. Released by Miramax Films.

Running time: One hour, 29 minutes.

Playing: Westside Pavilion, West Los Angeles; Sunset 5, West Hollywood; Cineplex Odeon Broadway, Santa Monica.

Our rating: Three and a half stars

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PHOTO Anthony Simcoe, left, Stephen Curry, Michael Caton and Anne Tenney star in the offbeat comedy ``The Castle.''