Falling for Grace: B. D. Wong, Gale Harold, and Margaret Cho star

For a totally conventional hetero Cinderella romantic comedy without even an Obligatory Gay Best Friend, Falling for Grace, which opens this weekend in San Francisco and next weekend in Washington, DC, is kind of a who's who of the queer and near-queer.

It stars Queer as Folk's Gale Harold as the JFK Jr-esque Andrew Barrington, Jr. He's vying for the affections of Grace Tang (Faye Ann Lee) with Steven, played by gay actor B.D. Wong (M. Butterfly, Law & Order: SVU). When Grace, who has been mistaken for a Hong Kong heiress by a group of upper-crust New Yorkers, falls for Andrew, Steven turns his sights on her best friend, Janie, brought outrageously to life by every gay boy's best friend, Margaret Cho.

And there's more: Andrew's brittle socialite mother is played by the brilliantly funny and gay-friendly Christine Baranski (Birdcage, Jeffery). Baranski is currently on Broadway, starring in Paul Rudnick's Regrets Only, where she plays a different kind of socialite mother, one who's torn between her husband, a conservative lawyer helping the president write an anti-gay marriage amendment, and her gay best friend, Hank.

It's also something of a Law and Order who's who, because in addition to Wong and Baranski, both L&O franchise alums, Andrew is about to become engaged to Kay, played by Stephanie March (SVU's ADA Alexandra Cabot). She's kind of WASP-y and uptight but her hair looks really fabulous in this movie, and there just has to be something gay about that.

Gale Harold is pretty adorable as Andrew, all soft-spoken sincerity and boyish charm as a socially-aware assistant attorney general out to expose the Chinatown sweatshop industry despite his wealthy family background. I was trying to think about how to explain his character, and remembered an episode of Star Trek: Voyager where the half-human, half-Klingon B'lanna Torres gets split into two people, one her human side, who's all femmey and timid, and the other her Klingon side, who's butch and tough and could possibly use a little work on her anger management issues.

Well, Andrew is what you'd get if Brian Kinney had his Klingon side removed. All the charm and the good looks and sweetness without the sharp edges and dark side and cute blond boyfriend.

Fay Ann Lee, who also wrote, directed, and produced the film, gives Grace more brains and depth than the usual heroine of a romantic comedy. I don't want to do the spoiler thing, but there's a scene about two-thirds of the way through where her brother Ming (Ken Leung) and Andrew run into each other in her apartment that turns the tide of the film for me. I really had no idea how they could resolve the mistaken identity plot without the whole thing falling apart, but her performance in that scene made me a believer. I might possibly have even gotten a very small tear in my eye, which does not often happen to me at fluffy little straight romance movies.

All that said, the film's best couple is B.D. Wong and Margaret Cho's Steven and Janie. From their first date at a performance of Mamma Mia -- where Janie's tight yellow mini-dress and go-go dancing win Steven's heart and, I confess, mine -- to the pivotal scene at the Gatsby Ball, where the secondary Cinderella storyline gets resolved, their playful rapport and exuberant campiness dominate every frame. And I'm avoiding the spoiler thing here again, but the scene where Steven leeringly plants a kiss on Janie's shoulder before sweeping her off to get a drink? Totally brilliant. Those two should have their own movie.

Interestingly, Wong was originally on board to direct this film, and was involved in helping get its initial financing. In 2004, when the film started production, he told Daily Variety:

It has the potential to be a very commercial mainstream comedy with an Asian American point of view that is honest and fresh. Growing up with the assumption that being Cinderella is what makes a girl happy is a loaded prospect when you're an Asian girl who gets to a juncture where it's not clear whether it's the guy or his world that she's fallen in love with.

Falling for Grace also stars Roger Rees as Andrew's repellant tycoon father (think Richard Gere's father from Pretty Woman), and features Lewis Black as a muckraking tabloid TV journalist and chef Bobby Flay as himself. Clem Chung and Elizabeth Sung are completely engaging as Grace’s very traditional parents.

When I was getting my parking ticket validated after the screening, the woman at the box office asked me how the movie was.

"Pretty cute," I answered. "Sweet. Funny."

She nodded. "I have to see it. It's got quite a buzz; we've been getting calls from all over the country asking about showtimes and tickets. I've never seen anything like it."

I told her to Google "Gale Harold" and it would probably all start to make sense. And his apparently very devoted fans won't be disappointed; as one reviewer said, he has "charm to spare" in the role, and he manages to convey that charm without any of the undercurrents of smarm that so many Prince Charmings convey right along with it.

And other than a couple of scenes that were re-shot in 2005 in which it was inexplicably much longer than the scenes before and after it, his hair didn't look too bad, either.

Falling For Grace Theatrical Trailer

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Falling for Grace opens at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas in San Francisco on July 20, and at the AMC Loews Dupont 5 in Washington DC on August 3. It premiered at three sold-out screenings at the Tribeca Film Festival. For more information, visit the film's official website.