A deadly earnest, relentlessly solemn affair, Canadian director Thom Fitzgerald's The Event arrives as if released from a time capsule circa 1990, when movies about the AIDS crisis were sheepishly asserting themselves on the arthouse circuit. At the time, these well-intentioned suds treated AIDS more as an issue than a common reality, running the characters through a nakedly schematic scenario, each one a sounding board for the filmmaker's point of view. Battles are fought, a few cathartic laughs are had, and then the whole thing ends with a grueling procession of teary bedside farewells. Fitzgerald doesn't update the formula so much as shovel on another hot-button issue in euthanasia, making the one-sided assertion that terminal AIDS patients have the right to a humane and dignified death. His heart may be in the right place, but Fitzgerald couches his argument in an absurdly overblown police procedural, miscasting Parker Posey as an unfeeling assistant D.A. determined to follow the letter of the law. Of a piece with the drab, washed-out digital-video photography, Posey carries out a heavy-handed investigation into the death of AIDS sufferer Don McKellar, whom she strongly suspects was ushered along by assisted suicide. Her inquiry focuses on Brent Carver, a close friend who may have orchestrated McKellar's mercy killing as part of his hospice work at a New York City AIDS clinic. The "event" of the title is a raucous blowout thrown on McKellar's last night and attended by his closest friends and a few family members, including his heartsick mother Olympia Dukakis and his younger sister Sarah Polley. In one form or another, the party guests are all co-conspirators in a felony, with some taking an active role in securing a lethal amount of prescription drugs and others merely bearing silent witness. As if the tone weren't leaden enough, the drama happens to intersect with Sept. 11, which Fitzgerald strains to connect with his hero's death, rolling global and personal tragedy into one giant ball of grief. The Event supports an argument for euthanasia by virtually denying the humanity of anyone opposed, whether it's Posey's icy automaton, McKellar's bitchy older sister, or a cop who poses as a gay cruiser in order to get information from a drag queen. (Would it be churlish to point out also that McKellar, chipper to the end, doesn't seem to be the greatest candidate for assisted suicide?) Only Dukakis' performance seems genuine in its motherly love, anguish, and conflicting emotions, providing an earthy counterpoint to Fitzgerald's crude manipulation. The other characters are just phrases in a rigged editorial.