Yet another demonstration of why plays so often make atrocious source material for films, the mawkish drama Twilight Of The Golds stars Jennifer Beals as a wealthy, pregnant Jewish woman who discovers from an experimental procedure that her unborn child will be homosexual. This leads her entire family—chilly matriarch Faye Dunaway, jolly father Garry Marshall, and openly, stereotypically gay brother Brendan Fraser—to re-examine their attitudes toward one another and toward homosexuality, and to confront the resentment that has been simmering under the surface of their seemingly ideal lives. Beals considers an abortion. The parents' barely suppressed homophobia is brought to light. Eventually, everyone learns the value of tolerance, and they all give each other big hugs. Twilight Of The Golds is essentially a message movie dressed up with meager science-fiction trimmings. In its attempt to address as many hot-button issues as possible, while still maintaing the dramatic arc of a soap opera, the film resembles an op-ed piece brought to life, with each character standing in for a sizable demographic group. The acting, aside from Fraser's surprisingly mature, touching performance as the family's black sheep, is abysmal, particularly Dunaway's shrill, irritating turn as the stereotypical castrating Jewish mother. As for Marshall, his emoting proves that as an actor, he is a remarkable producer of nostalgic sitcoms. The saddest thing about Golds has to be that it was fairly well-received at last year's Sundance Film Festival, an event that is theoretically supposed to serve as an alternative to the sort of crowd-pleasing, middlebrow, television-style antics that are served up unapologetically by Twilight Of The Golds.