When a movie grapples with issues as sobering as those in The Quiet, it feels irresponsible to hit it with the full brunt of one's critical scorn. However, just as it's possible to ineptly handle frivolous subject matter, it's also possible to drop the ball on incest, social alienation, prescription drug abuse, the death of parents, and teen deafness. The Quiet plays like a bunch of topical issues masquerading as an American Beauty knockoff, rather than an honest portrait of dysfunction. In visiting this intensely serious territory, director Jamie Babbit shows none of the humor that informed her previous work, such as But I'm a Cheerleader and numerous episodes of Gilmore Girls. Like in Cheerleader, there's some attempt to satirize the social stratification of teenagers, but it's handled so heavily, with so few winks to the viewer, that it doesn't qualify as anything other than dark drama verging on melodrama. While Camilla Belle and Elisha Cuthbert play familiar roles -- Belle an introvert, Cuthbert a temptress -- the latter's role is particularly problematic. As the victim of her father's sexual advances, she doesn't seem quite repulsed enough by his behavior for it to be an unambiguous condemnation. Sure, that's part of the psychological mind-screw of incest, but it would take a smarter movie than this to effectively distill those shades of gray. When payback does come, it's sensationalistic to the point of unbelievability. Speaking of her father, Martin Donovan plays this creep against type, wasting his natural affability, while Edie Falco, also playing against type as an enabling pushover, never gets to haul out the fierce independence she showed on The Sopranos. It's commendable that the director and stars are trying to go outside their comfort zone, but not if the result is a shallow, scolding exercise like The Quiet.