MOVIE REVIEW

By Carina Chocano, Times Staff Writer

Exhibit No. 546 in the ongoing case against madcap ensemble comedies set against holiday- and wedding-related reunions, "April's Shower" crams a dozen one-note characters into a gloomy Los Angeles Craftsman for the express purpose of perpetrating yet another senseless zany-bomb attack on the assembled guests. The occasion is a bridal shower for April (Maria Cina), a closeted lesbian whose wounded former lover Alex (Trish Doolan, who also directs) has been cornered into hosting the shindig.

Guests include a repressed therapist with a screaming Scottish stalker; a city-struck, pigtailed cousin from Albany; a porn-star future sister-in-law; a bisexual Argentine entertainer; a hunky pizza guy; a couple of publicly feuding lesbians; a distraught Catholic mother; some firemen — I think I'll stop there. Confessions, shocking revelations and epiphanies spring like sudden leaks, and the dialogue is artless and predictable. "April's Shower" is clearly a labor of love, to the point where it feels churlish and mean-spirited not to like it. But the movie suffers from a malady common to tiny indies of the let's-put-on-a-show variety — it strains for irrepressibly nutty, but lands squarely in annoying.

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It's too bad, given the paucity of truly independent films, especially ones that realistically portray contemporary relationships.

But "April's Shower" feels too self-congratulatory to be honest, and honesty is all a movie like this has going for it.