No one does schmaltz with more finesse and gusto than Gena Rowlands, and she's at her best in this shamelessly manipulative, implausible, but thoroughly satisfying sudser directed by her son, Nick Cassavetes. She's Mildred, a widower with a comfortable pension and suburban home, whom we first meet as she's grumblingly doing a paper route for her 23-year-old dysfunctional daughter, Ann (a strident Moirea Kelly). Ann moves out, leaving Mildred in an empty house until Monica (Marisa Tomei in a blonde-dyed variation of her Oscar-winning My Cousin Vinny routine), the battered bimboish housewife next door, dumps her six-year-old son J.J. (a hauntingly melancholy Jake Lloyd) on her doorstep. The expected bonding develops, but Cassavetes and Rowlands develop these expectations into genuinely moving and intelligent emotional revelations. Add a sweet and charming Gérard Depardieu as an amorous truckdriver from Quebec and a Bill Weld-like David Sherill as Mildred's tony and pampered son Ethan and Unhook the Stars succeeds far better than its cheesy title and premise would indicate. Screens at the Cheri at 8 and 10 p.m.; and at the Copley Place on Friday at 11 a.m. and 1:10 and 3:20 p.m. Boston Film Excellence Award winner Gena Rowlands will appear at tonight's 8 p.m. showing.