By CYNTHIA JOYCE in the current cinematic climate, cynicism is often confused with cleverness and young writers and directors are encouraged to flex their filmmaking muscles with the use of gratuitous graphic violence. Fortunately, triple-threat writer/director/actor Edward Burns provides a refreshingly earnest antidote to the recent onslaught of "dark" films with his light but hilarious latest, "She's the One." Much like his surprise low-budget box office hit, "Brothers McMullen," which earned Burns the 1995 Sundance Grand Jury Award, "She's the One" is the sweet if sometimes morally didactic story of three men in an Irish-American Catholic family who struggle to reconcile their conflicting views about life and love. With "She's the One," Burns revisits a theme touched upon in "Brothers": how members of the same family can share blood and upbringing but emerge with completely different attitudes toward life. As the story of the "Fighting Fitzpatricks" -- the happy-go-lucky Mickey (played by Burns), his uptight younger brother Francis (Mike McGlone) and their well-intentioned but often unwise father (John Mahoney) -- unfolds, it becomes clear that it is mutual resentment, not mutual respect, that forms the strongest bonds in their relationships. It's an idea that operates on several levels in the film --- from the three men's romantic relationships to their relationships to one another to the family's relationship to the Catholic Church. Next Page: Fear and Hope in Irish-Catholic New York One for the Road: Tom Petty's soundtrack for "She's the One." The Sundance Kid: An interview with Edward Burns