s sweetly intentioned as it is clumsily predictable, ``Kids in America'' is a fact-inspired liberal rant against the current post-Patriot Act climate that stifles free speech and social activism among high schoolers.

Multiethnic with an upwardly mobile, college-directed student body, Booker High School has cheerleaders, a school newspaper, a student film program and hyperkinetic Donna Weller (Julie Bowen), the witchiest principal this side of ``Wicked,'' who is running for state superintendent.

When a student sticks condoms to her outfit to promote safe sex over the Halloween weekend, Weller suspends her. When she reads a student's diary with violent imagery, it's another suspension. When Holden Donovan (Gregory Smith), the school's resident stud, extemporizes during a ``Hamlet'' soliloquy to protest against the principal, he's expelled.

What's a student body to do when ugly injustice rears its blond head? Retaliate? The school newspaper adviser (Adam Arkin, one of the many celebrities featured in small roles) looks aghast. ``Are you crazy?'' he emphasizes, as if the students have no rights.

But the students do protest, staging a same-sex kissathon to highlight the homophobia inherent in suspending two boys for kissing in school - putting on a show just like Judy and Mickey did during their wartime - and asking everyone not to vote for Weller.

Shot in a colorful, lighthearted style that gives a crispness to the timeworn tale, ``Kids in America'' is really an afternoon TV civics special.

Unfortunately, its hideous heavy-handedness is not the fantasy of screenwriters Andrew Shaifer and Josh Stolberg (who also directed). As the end titles roll on (and on), real victims of intolerance tell their stories. The girl who wore condoms to support safe sex? She was losing her mother to AIDS and wanted to make sure no one else would suffer that fate. Another young girl wore a sweatshirt that proclaimed ``Barbie is a lesbian.'' She, too, was suspended.

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