In Jeffrey, writer Paul Rudnick and director Christopher Ashley take Rudnick's off-Broadway hit and turn it into a surprisingly funny and touching movie comedy. The story of a gay man who decides to give up sex out of a fear of AIDS, Jeffrey is bawdy and wild, a film with a smile that doesn't ignore the serious side of the subject it is dealing with. But Rudnick (and, to a lesser extent, Ashley) finds a way to elicit laughter and touch the heart at the same time.

His title character, Jeffrey (Steven Weber), is a would-be actor who supports himself by working as a catering waiter ("It's like the gay National Guard," he jokes). But, while he loves sex, he hates what it has turned into in the age of AIDS: a fear-laden encounter involving, among other things, latex, sexual histories and a general loss of passion. So he decides to chuck it all for a life of celibacy: No sex, no worry. If he can avoid contact, he can avoid AIDS. Then, the very day he makes this resolution (and heads off to the gym to sublimate all that sexual energy), he meets the man of his dreams: Steve (Michael T. Weiss), a bartender.

But Jeffrey battles his attraction right up to the minute that his best friend, Sterling (Patrick Stewart), fixes him up with Steve and convinces him to go out with him. Then Steve tells him that he's HIV-positive, and Jeffrey retreats once again. He can't cope, he says, with the prospect of falling in love with someone who will become sick and die. He would rather live an insular, lonely life than risk the pain of falling for someone with the AIDS virus.

The plot itself is relatively limited -- basically, whether or not Jeffrey will come out of his self-imposed exile. The subplot, about Sterling's relationship with his young dancer-lover Darius (Bryan Batt), underscores Jeffrey's terror, as he watches Sterling deal with Darius' AIDS-induced decline.

Rather than building plot, Rudnick builds character, by extrapolating and digressing in hilarious ways. Even as Jeffrey considers alternatives to sex, he's whisked in his mind to a game show called "It's Just Sex," in which he searches for reasons to avoid intimate contact. Or he imagines himself confiding his problems to a blustering, facile self-help guru before a TV audience. His point, ultimately, is that fear of pain is often worse than the pain itself. A life spent trying to avoid unhappiness ultimately is a lonely and anxious one. As Darius tells Jeffrey, "Hate AIDS -- not life."

Rudnick's writing is sharp and witty, filled with catty one-liners that spoof everything from support groups (Olympia Dukakis appears at one point as the supportive mother of a "presurgical transsexual lesbian") to shopping. He uses gay stereotypes for laughs, but also turns them inside out to show what is hidden behind the cliched facade. For the most part, he is well-served by Ashley, a first-time filmmaker whose other work has been in theater. Ashley gets off to a slightly rocky start; the film takes about 10 minutes to find its rhythm, before settling in to pull the maximum number of laughs out of the material, while touching on the tougher issues as well.

Weber makes a solid Jeffrey: ambivalent, scared and funny, though his performance at times is a shade on the bland side. Still, he's believable as a gay man torn between his impulses and his fears. Patrick Stewart steals the show as the acerbic, catty Sterling. He has the lion's share of Rudnick's funny lines and he delivers them with stinging timing. Almost equally strong is Bryan Batt as Darius; he makes this air-headed dancer lovably concrete, finding the savant wisdom of someone who has achieved his goal in life: a role in "Cats." Other actors show up to strong effect in tiny roles: Robert Klein as a smarmy game show host; Sigourney Weaver as a tough-talking self-help quack; Kathy Najimy as one of her followers; and particularly Nathan Lane, in a hilarious turn as a priest who tries to seduce Jeffrey.

"Jeffrey" is witty, romantic and timely, a strong adaptation of a well-written play. You don't have to be gay to get the jokes -- just human.

MARSHALL FINE, Gannett News Service