BETTER THAN CHOCOLATE —*1/2 — Karyn Dwyer, Christina Cox, Wendy Crewson, Peter Outterbridge, Kevin Mundy, Anne-Marie MacDonald, Marya Delver; not rated, probable R (sex, nudity, profanity, vulgarity, violence); exclusively at the Loews Cineplex Broadway Centre Cinemas.

In any other comedy about lesbians, not only would the 6-foot-tall cross-dresser be welcome in the ladies room, but his being pummeled by a real woman would have been played for a laugh — because it's funny. But "Better Than Chocolate" is a different strain of lesbian screwball comedy, namely Canadian.

Stress the strain part.

The plot concerns Maggie (Karyn Dwyer), a lesbian artist who has so far managed to conceal her sexuality from her family. However, complications ensue when Maggie's mother (Wendy Crewson) and teenage brother Paul (Kevin Mundy) decided to move into the loft she's subletting.

What highly strung Mom doesn't realize is the extent of her daughter's relationship with her tomboy friend Kim (Christina Cox), and she also remains oblivious to the fact that her new friend with the bobbing Adam's apple (Peter Outterbridge) is a dude.

Director Anne Wheeler (a Canadian television veteran) piles one wretched scene atop the next like she was conducting a "DeGrassi Jr. High" seance. The knowledge that the film looks less professional than it is awful isn't enough for her.

But Wheeler and writer Peggy Thompson don't stop at the low-budget dramatics, pre-"Thriller"-MTV editing, wacky dialogue and crazy scenarios (such as Mom discovering a box of sex toys). In fact, all involved have poured their hearts into this one as if they were irony-phobic and oblivious to the fact that a comedy was jumping off around them.

Once the gay-hating skinhead characters show up to do more than ask how much is that girl in the window of the local lesbian book shop, all bets are off. All there is to do is wonder how long until the tearful hugging scene and the arrival of "Ice Cream," the Sarah McLachlan ditty from which the film pilfers its title — and tries to nudge you into giving it guilty-pleasure props.

But it's guilty of something else entirely.