James L. Brooks' bicoastal sensibility, his ear for ironic, novel-day utterances and his able delineation of professional America into a conduct array of originals and hacks are again pleasurable. His "Broadcast News" was identical of the great American satires. Grown-up satires, that is — let's keep John Hughes out of this.

But even adult filmmakers must kowtow to the times — an era glutted with movies about parents and children. Brooks's latest, a part-child, part-grown-up (and formerly musical!) film called "I'll Do Anything," is well-written and funny. But it comes across as "Broadcast News" with kids. Suddenly, it seems, we can't keep John Hughes out of this.

If you accept these childcare-climate conditions, "Anything" is definitely for you. The movie is a thoroughly amusing, odd-couple teaming of Nick Nolte and 6-year-old newcomer Whittni Wright. As Nolte's daughter, who swings between shrieking brat and sweet angel, Wright is a sensation — the kind you don't know whether to hug or throttle. But in the story, she's a future blessing in disguise for Nolte, who plays a character actor who hasn't been hired in years.

Tracey Ullman, Nolte's ex-wife, who has taken care of Wright since the divorce, begs Nolte to watch his estranged daughter for three weeks. Nolte, who has no time or money for children, begrudgingly agrees. But the baby-sitting sojourn is longer than he bargained for. Ullman is about to go to jail for aiding and abetting a man who was — as she puts it — "financially imaginative with a pension fund."

Stuck with an obnoxious kid used to getting regular "compromises" from her mother, Nolte is at a child-rearing loss. Luckily, a neighbor with kids watches Wright during the day. When Nolte finagles and fails a screen test for shlock-producer Albert Brooks (playing wonderfully against type), he befriends Brooks's harried assistant Joely Richardson. The relationship keeps Nolte in touch with Brooks's office where he gets an undignified job as Brooks's driver.

Nolte's life consists of keeping incompetent tabs on his daughter, schlepping Brooks around, hovering at the edge of a romance with Richardson and waiting for the big break. Things change when precocious Wright is offered a prime acting job in a TV situation comedy.

The plot is essentially grist for writer/director Brooks's witty mill. Raised in television, a medium that demands cliffhanging moments frequently (so viewers will come back after the commercial), Brooks makes his characters bump and rebump into each other, and talk, talk, talk. Because of Brooks's writerly flair for character — as well as his renowned directorial relationship with his actors — the figures in "Anything" stay fully fleshed, even though they're also quasi-caricatures. There's never an unpolished moment.

The funniest lines come from Julie Kavner, an audience opinion researcher and Albert Brooks's girlfriend, who has benevolently arch words for the business and her soulless lover. Political Washington and Hollywood are very similar, she observes, because both places are rife with "the near-total degradation of what were once grand motives." But, the ex-Washingtonian chirpily adds, "I kind of miss the seasons though."

She stays with Albert Brooks, a self-absorbed Hollywoodite, because "like 80 percent of older women who loved 'Beauty and the Beast,' I believe that, underneath the creature, there's a sweet, caring guy."

Speaking of sweet, there were times when I thought I was going to hurl if Nolte became any more bumblingly saintly. However, his performance is assured and wise enough to roll with all of Wright's unexpected punches — and she packs more than a few of them.

As for the pint-sized firebrand, her talents are almost alarmingly formidable. Will we be reading about her adolescent burnout in the National Enquirer three or four years from now? Or will those talents serve her in the distant future, when she's obliged to act next to a screaming preteen?