SPACEY, STARK SETTING MAKE `NEWS'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

Lovers of E. Annie Proulx's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel ``The Shipping News'' are likely to feel betrayed soon after they set eyes on Lasse Hallstrom's film adaptation. What, they'll wonder, is a slightly puffy Kevin Spacey doing playing a role that everyone imagined an actor of at least John Goodman's heft embodying?

But despite that and a number of edges that the ``Chocolat'' confectioner has smoothed over, evidently to make the movie more consumable for his core audience of aged gentlefolk, Proulx fans could actually have done a lot worse. ``News'' sustains a good deal of emotional honesty, despite Hallstrom and screenwriter Robert Nelson Jacobs' incessant efforts to make it as adorably quirky as their last film was.

And a lot of that can be credited to Spacey, who does a quietly herculean job of turning the least-assertive movie character of the year into a compelling protagonist. His work here is not as memorable as Billy Bob Thornton's recent turn as the similarly gumption-deficient ``Man Who Wasn't There,'' but it's not as severely stylized, either. Spacey gives us an everyschlub who we really want to root for, rather than raptly observe like a fascinating alien insect.

Aiding Spacey's anchoring portrayal are the rich shadings Julianne Moore brings to her deceptively cool Wavey Prowse character (again, quite a departure from the book's description), an atypically restrained (though crusty as usual) Judi Dench and, perhaps most crucially, the inhospitably imposing Newfoundland coast where most of the movie takes place. For all the dourly eccentric Canadians named Buggit or Nutbeem that Hallstrom deploys to eat squidburgers and seal flipper pie for our amusement, nothing in this beautifully harsh environment can stay cute for very long.

In an unnecessary voice-over and rather effective opening montage, we're given the gist of Quoyle's (Spacey) sad-sack substitute for a life. Tossed in a lake by an uncaring father so he'd learn to swim at a young age, he's grown up hating water - and, by extension, any aspect of life that required skill or exertion.

To blast through the backstory quickly, Quoyle's got a brain-dead job at a printing plant in Poughkeepsie when an only-in-the-movies supertramp named Petal (Cate Blanchett, overdoing it along with her hair and makeup crew) vamps him into marrying her. Years later, they have a sullen daughter, Bunny (Alyssa, Kaitlyn and Lauren Gainer - and no, you can't discern which one's in which scene), Petal gets herself killed in a car accident with one of her boyfriends, Quoyle's parents commit suicide and his long-lost aunt, Agnis (Dench), suddenly shows up to steal her brother's ashes.

The real story starts when Quoyle, Agnis and Bunny embark for the long-abandoned family homestead to make a new start. A peeling, clapboard monstrosity set out on a North Atlantic promontory so precarious that steel cables are necessary to keep it from blowing away, this truly appears to be the end of the Earth that Quoyle's nowhere life has been collapsing toward all along.

But he's got to do something, so he applies for work at the little paper in the nearby fishing village. It's staffed by, well, lovable Newfie eccentrics (Pete Postlethwaite, Rhys Ifans, Gordon Pinsent) and owned by a cranky fisherman (Scott Glenn) who doesn't need a printer, but can use a reporter to cover car wrecks and the title comings and goings at the harbor.

Understandably phobic to both beats, Quoyle takes the assignment anyway. After a few bad starts, he discovers he can not only write, but actually has an authorial voice. Then there's Wavey, the local single mom with a disabled son; after a few bad starts, Quoyle figures out how to communicate with her as well.

More than just finally taking on some semblance of manhood, Quoyle also learns about the dire, dysfunctional history of his clan, which doesn't make him seem like such a loser by comparison.

Playing entirely against the type of savvy cynics he's so convincingly created time after time, Spacey isn't exactly doing what he does best here. But it's an impressively professional feat from beginning to end, subtly nuanced at every point where it could have gotten bathetic or self-pitying. Yes, ``The Shipping News'' is one of many ``the book was better'' cases, but it could just as easily have been made into a far lesser film than this one.

``THE SHIPPING NEWS''

(Rated R: language, sex, violence, children in jeopardy)

The stars: Kevin Spacey, Julianne Moore, Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, Pete Postlethwaite, Scott Glenn, Rhys Ifans, Gordon Pinsent.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Lasse Hallstrom. Written by Robert Nelson Jacobs, based on E. Annie Proulx's novel. Produced by Irwin Winkler, Linda Goldstein Knowlton and Leslie Holleran. Released by Miramax Films.

Running time: One hour, 51 minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Three stars

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) ``Kate & Leopold''

(2 -- cover -- color) ``Ali''

(3 -- cover -- color) ''The Shipping News''

(4) In an isolated Newfoundland town, emotionally remote newspaper reporter Kevin Spacey learns to communicate with local single mom Julianne Moore in ``The Shipping News.''