Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 31, 1994 TAG: 9403310282
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Tom Shale
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
And lo, ``Christy'' answers the call, but not with a bang. With a whimper. The new series, set in the Tennessee backwoods of 1912, premieres as a two-hour movie on Sunday, then becomes a weekly hour as of April 7.
Encouraged by the public and congressional outcry against televised violence, the networks appear to be trying harder to come up with wholesome, pro-social fare. This is all to be encouraged. But just being nice isn't enough. ``Christy'' is nice as pie and hugely, fabulously dull.
Part of the problem is the casting. As heroine Christy Huddleston, a young teacher trying to bring education to an impoverished community in the Great Smoky Mountains, Kellie Martin is never believable and often annoying. The actress, formerly of the defunct ABC series ``Life Goes On,'' has a grand total of two expressions and always seems to be looking for a mirror in which to admire them.
When she shares scenes with Tyne Daly, playing a flinty Quaker woman named Alice Henderson, Martin is completely upstaged; you realize there's an actual actress on the screen. Similarly, bland Randall Batinkoff as an ingenuous young preacher seems entirely unconvincing, and when in narration Christy talks about his ``strong arms,'' viewers may scratch their heads in bafflement.
There have been many, many films about fish-out-of-water teachers struggling against all odds to reach difficult students, from ``Conrack,'' the excellent 1974 movie about a teacher in the rural South, to ``Stand and Deliver,'' an inspiring 1987 film about kids learning math in the barrio.
And there've been many, many more: ``Blackboard Jungle,'' ``To Sir with Love'' and ``The King and I,'' to name a few.
``Christy'' can't hold a candle, nor even a match, to any of these. Writer Patricia Green fails to give the students individual identities (except for a mute girl and the tall son of a moonshiner) nor to dramatize what special qualities great teaching takes. Indeed, Christy comes off not as particularly competent, just doggedly earnest.
The portrait of backwoods folk is strictly Hollywood. People say ``younguns'' a lot and drop their ``g's'' a lot (``Younguns gotta have their learnin'''). Indeed, this may be the g-dropping capital of the world.
Christy, meanwhile, agonizes repeatedly about unpleasant smells she encounters. In narration, ostensibly from her diary, she describes entering the home of a student: ``The stench was overwhelming.'' Earlier she complains about the odor from pigs living underneath the makeshift classroom.
Why doesn't the whiny little ninny with the oversensitive schnoz just pack up and go home?
The story lurches from crisis to crisis, with the narration supplying all of the heroine's complaints in deadening detail. Perhaps a great actress like Sally Field, when she was younger, or Mare Winningham, or even Melissa Gilbert could have made Christy not only sympathetic but memorable. Unfortunately, Martin has few emotive powers to draw on.
She makes Christy seem a spoiled and sanctimonious snip. Martin would be much better playing the lead in ``The Tonya Harding Story.''
Anyone who's seen more than two movies in their life will know that the little mute girl in Christy's class will miraculously regain her speech before the evening is over. It has to be admitted that as played by Alyssa Hmielewski (yes, really), the child is an affectingly angelic presence.
``Christy'' needs more than one angel to save it, however; it needs a whole platoon. Wholesome fare this insipid is almost enough to make one long for another Amy Fisher movie, or even god forbid another Diane Sawyer interview with Charles Manson and his pals.
Tom Shales is a Washington Post television columnist.
- Washington Post Writers Group
by CNB