'Staying Together' (R)

It doesn't take long for "Staying Together" to fall apart. Five, maybe 10 minutes if we're being generous. Set in a sleepy Southern town where nobody has a Southern accent, it is a movie without a spine, an insensate dramedy replete with hastily manufactured, unmotivated conflicts.

Three young actors, two of whom think they are James Dean, costar in this lazy look at the lives and loves of the McDermott brothers. They're probably supposed to be lovable but they are, in fact, badly brought up brats. This is understandable given the ineptitude of their mother, a mealy-mouthed hand-wringer played by Melinda Dillon, who vaguely recalls a basset hound.

Dad (Jim Haynie), a fiftyish lump, surprises the boys by selling off the family restaurant, a thriving chicken-lickin'. "Have you ever seen your mother serve me an egg?" says Dad, by way of explaining how much he hates poultry. Brian (Tim Quill), in shock, cusses his father out, throws what's left of his supper at him and stalks off to become a construction worker.

As it happens, the construction company is run by the fiance of Beverly (Daphne Zuniga), the dream girl of another brother, Kit (Dermot Mulroney). Kit, a marathon runner, is the stable one and Duncan (Sean Astin) is the one who sleeps in his own vomit. He's the family clown and a teenage alcoholic, but nobody seems concerned about it. He hopes to lose his virginity to a trashy waitress.

Lee Grant, who directed this filial disaster, proves that a woman can be every bit as loutish as a man behind the camera. Moments of amour herein are of the thank-you-ma'am,- I-gotta-get-back-to-the-pullets variety. It's microwave sex -- quick, and bells ring too. Like her heroes, Grant has absolutely no sense of timing; events occur out of sync and there's no buildup for the melodrama. The McDermotts set off on their long-dreamed-of trip to Yosemite, and the very next second, Mom returns to find the boys have made a mess of the kitchen. Oh, those McDermott brothers.

Screenwriter Monte Merrick has a stunningly mundane world view. He and Grant cluck over the loss of quirky home-style restaurants like the McDermotts' and bucolic towns like the movie's Ridgeway, S.C., and yet Ridgeway folks act as if they're all surfers from Southern California.

Upon viewing this chicken epic, even Colonel Sanders would cry foul. Lee Grant, what kind of batter did you use, anyway?

Staying Together is rated R