As if looking over their shoulders at the movie production codes of 1930, filmmakers still step gingerly, rarely daring a production in which characters’ homosexuality is a fact of life, present but incidental, as in Silkwood and My Beautiful Launderette. From their flurry to cash in on the hot theme, we are given, instead, tragedies in every one of which AIDS must enter or, at the opposite extreme, made-to-order sitcoms usually involving the pratfalls of a child who comes out and wins parental backing.

Among the latter, its obvious-from-word-one resolution handled pretty well, Touch of Pink is not so embarrassing as it starts out and should even please many old enough to know (and care) who Cary Grant was. Just not to my personal pleasure, however, which does not take kindly to send-ups of send-ups: of Bollywood, for starters -- which these days comes to the West out of Toronto -- or of wonderful old movies and stars, and Kyle MacLachlan’s exaggeratedly inflected Spirit of Cary Grant parodies Sammy Davis, Jr., as well as Tony Curtis doing the same parodic routine.

More in the spirit of 6’4” pooka-rabbit Harvey or Bogart’s ghost mentoring Woody Allen, suave but childish retro-looking Grant is the unseen companion of Alim (Jimi Mistry) in gay writer-director-poet Ian Iqbal Rashid’s film. The shade of the Bristol-born circus and screen performer has accompanied the Westernized, Mombasa-born young man since childhood, when widowed mother Nuru (Suleka Mathew) left him, ostensibly for a secretarial course but really to be like Doris Day in London. (The title pun, by the way, is one of several, some good, some bad, and all lost on anyone under fifty.) Though mom now decries the harmful effects of movies on Muslims, it will turn out that she loved all those films, seen years later in Kenya’s Naz Cinema.

Then they all moved to Toronto, where the brunt of parenting fell on Aunt Dolly (Veena Sood) and her dry-cleaning-chain husband (Brian George), and where their son Khaled (Raoul Bhaneja) had a homosexual relationship with cousin Alim. Frustrated by mother’s badgering and inner sadness, and by family emphasis on Indian tradition, Alim escaped to London, where he now works as a still photographer in the movie business, feels free, and shares a roomy rented flat with his Anglo boyfriend, UNICEF economist Giles (Kristen Holden-Ried).

At a gay Ramrod Bar surprise anniversary for the two thirty-year-olds, Giles’s mum and dad are stuffy but accepting, while openly supportive sister Delia (Liisa Repo-Martell) has her eye on snaring swimming champion Alistair, a mutual school friend who sets his sights on Giles.

Meanwhile, jealous of sister Dolly’s preparations for money-machine dentist Khaled’s upcoming wedding, mother Nuru heads for London to repair maternal bridges and bring her son back for the Canadian affair and, she hopes, an Indian Muslim bride. Alim awkwardly tries to reveal the truth, but doesn’t, and, pretending to be no more than a handy roommate with deep pockets, Giles likes his lover’s mother and gallantly squires her about town.

Egged on by the jealous Spirit of Cary, who realizes that his existence depends on the protégé’s willing it, Alim spills the beans and quarrels with both lover and mother. Piqued, the former moves out, the latter returns alone to the bitter pill of her sister’s triumph. Grant’s suggested vacation to the Bermudas or Greek islands becomes Alim’s unannounced guilt-flight to Toronto, where Dolly’s hypocrisy will out, as will cousin Khaled’s brutal vulgarity. But, this being satiric romantic comedy, Nuru’s decency and pluck will surface to the rescue, true lovers be reunited, and silver-screen fantasy graciously yield its place to real life. “Live every moment; be happy, live it for me.”

Flat in its humor more often than not, and bogged down with some bad acting, the film is somewhat redeemed as it runs down. Pale alongside the b&w classics it evokes -- what film would not be? -- for all its defects, Touch of Pink is more watchable than the usual gay comedy. 

(Released by Sony Pictures Classics and rated “R” for sexual content and brief language.)