TAKE A HANKIE TO `TRUE THING'.

Byline: Bob Strauss Daily News Film Critic

``One True Thing'' is a smarter than average, generally well-acted ``Mom's dying'' movie. With a cast headed by the always-thoughtful Meryl Streep, Renee Zellweger and William Hurt and change-of-pace direction by the hugely talented Carl Franklin (``One False Move,'' ``Devil in a Blue Dress''), it can hardly help but maintain a certain dignity, even as it barrels full-out toward weepy martyrdom.

However, a more intriguing story than the one that's ultimately presented here keeps promising to break through but never does. On the other hand, the film's continued attempts to paint well-educated, ambitious people as selfish and emotionally constricted never really stick, either. The film accepts the fact that nobody's perfect (with the possible, very safe exception of Mom), which makes it either admirably humanistic or pretty wimpy, depending on your perspective.

Based on Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Anna Quindlen's novel, the movie is incalculably aided by Zellweger's self-involved but measuredly vulnerable portrayal of - what else? - a savvy, driven young journalist. While Streep depends a bit too obviously on her formidable technique this time around, Zellweger finds a spiky naturalness that helps the movie through its more maudlin, retrograde moments.

Ellen Gulden's desk at New York magazine's office is rarely unmanned, day or night, and is buried in empty coffee cups to prove it. It's obvious why the careerist's relationship with fellow Ivy League grad Jordan (Nicky Katt) is a free-floating, second-thought kind of affair.

Ellen takes after her dad, George (Hurt), an admired academic who dominates the English department at a small-town college. She is conversely mortified by her mother, Kate (Streep), who has apparently devoted whatever brainpower she has to becoming Martha Stewart, minus the genius for self-promotion. Our first extensive exposure to the disconcertingly chirpy, somewhat ditzy Kate has her all done up in pigtails and gingham like Dorothy from ``The Wizard of Oz''; it's George's birthday, and she's throwing a surprise, come-as-your-favorite-literary-character party.

Dressed in fashionable black (it's the late 1980s), Ellen sneers that she's come as Sylvia Plath. For a little while, George seems to share his daughter's condescension, though it's instructive that he never specifically aims his sharp critical faculties at Kate. The next day, Ellen thinks she learns why: Mom's got cancer, and George implores Ellen to move home and care for her.

This is something that supposedly slow Kate understands Ellen is singularly unprepared to do. Not only does her daughter possess zero domestic skills, but the two women have never gotten along. Reluctantly, resentfully dutiful, Ellen soon tumbles onto the fact that it's her idolized father who really needs taking care of; the man cannot pursue his brilliant work without some woman keeping his home in order.

Inevitably, Ellen learns that Kate's got more on the ball than she ever suspected while, just as predictably, her admiration for George is systematically shattered. None of this plays out as cut-and-dried as it would in a TV movie, though. Oversanctified as Kate becomes with every degenerative step of her disease, Streep keeps her tied to this world of ours by keeping the character slightly and persuasively ridiculous. Meanwhile, George may well be as awful as a disillusioned daughter can imagine - but Karen Croner's intermittently insightful script suggests that Ellen may indeed be imagining the worst.

These touches are welcome in a story whose overriding agenda is ultra-emotional mother-daughter bonding, sealed with kisses and all the tears that are fit to jerk. The film does that expertly. Too bad it's just as deft at avoiding the pricklier, doubtlessly more interesting aspects of life in a family with such pronounced intellectual imbalances. At one heavily acted point, Kate cries to her grumpy child that ``it's so much easier to be happy.'' Despite its promise of naked family psychodrama, that might as well be the movie's motto.

Probably the most adroit aspect of the film is the way it depicts Ellen's acceptance of her mother's happy homemaking tips, which range all the way from proper bulb-planting techniques to how to stay in love with a mate whose behavior you never thought you'd tolerate. The daughter's fears of turning into a mental marshmallow don't materialize; considering how close the film comes to screaming that a woman's place is in the home, that's a fairly breathtaking balancing act.

THE FACTS

The film: ``One True Thing'' (R; language, drug use).

The stars: Renee Zellweger, Meryl Streep, William Hurt, Tom Everett Scott.

Behind the scenes: Directed by Carl Franklin. Written by Karen Croner, based on Anna Quindlen's novel. Produced by Harry Ufland. Released by Universal Pictures.

Running time: Two hours, five minutes.

Playing: Citywide.

Our rating: Three Stars.

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Photo

Photo: Meryl Streep, left, plays a homemaker, and Renee Zellweger is her resentful daughter in ``One True Thing.''