'Yonkers Joe' is a penny- ante 'Rain Man' about a gambling hustler with a mentally challenged son. It's even got a scene in which the younger man rides down a glitzy escalator in a sharp white suit.


Although the character thinks he's in 'Saturday Night Fever,' Robert Celestino's decently done but dreary movie is Drizzle Man all the way.


Thomas Guiry is good as the high-functioning Joe Jr., who gets kicked out of his facility just as he's coming of age and becoming increasingly aggressive, both verbally and physically. This is bad news for his single dad - Joe Sr. - a scam artist who has to take custody of the lad just as he's been made by most of Atlantic City's casinos and needs to head for Vegas in search of fresh suckers.


A can't-escape-it Catholic, well-played by Chazz Palminteri, big Joe figures his son's condition is some kind of cosmic payback for his unsavory choice of profession. He also feels guilty about how he's treated the boy, whose mom ran off when he came out the way he did.


But Joe's partner in scams and sort-of girlfriend Janice (Christine Lahti, the most excellent of the film's many fine performers) likes the lad and knows how to relate to him. If all this sounds pretty mushy, it isn't played that way.


We're talking tough, hard-knock people who really must struggle to access their better natures.


'Yonkers Joe's' problems lie in the world these folks live in.


They're neither seedy enough nor classy enough to be of much interest to nongamblers, and the scams young Joe and his cronies cook up don't come off as cleverly as director Celestino evidently thinks they are.

The movie ultimately does go in predictable emotional directions. Palminteri and Lahti - and such fine, not-seen-enough supporting players as Michael Lerner and Michael Rispoli - make the absolute most of uninspired material.


But 'Yonkers Joe' remains, at best, a TV movie with lots of swearing, and in that way, it's kind of a con itself.


YONKERS JOE  

R: language, adult situations.

Starring: Chazz Palminteri, Christine Lahti and Thomas Guiry.

Director: Robert Celestino.

Running time: 1 hr. 42 min. Playing: Sunset 5 in West Hollywood.

In a nutshell: Penny-ante "Rain Man" about a gambling hustler and his mentally challenged son. Well-acted but dreary.