Usually peopled with actors and actresses familiar enough to seem like neighbors, made-for-TV movies are generally as forgettable as yesterday`s newspaper.
On Monday and Tuesday, three films prove that point.
”Murder Without Motive: The Education and Killing of Edmund Perry” (8 p.m. Monday on NBC-Ch. 5) is based on the 1985 shooting of a black honors student by New York police, and the book that Robert Sam Anson wrote about it.
The film centers on a cultural-racial clash, as Perry (Curtis McClarin), prodded by an ambitious mother, wins a scholarship to the Phillips Exeter Academy, the prestigious, predominantly white prep school a world away from Perry`s native Harlem.
But the kids he encounters, prepped out and wealthy, aren`t like kids at all. They are like little adults. Wait until you see the thoughtful looks exchanged as Perry tries to explain the myth of Sisyphus as modern metaphor. You`d think you were at a Great Books gathering rather than in a high school classroom.
The relationships-between Perry and a white classmate, between Perry and a white girlfriend and between Perry and his family-are never given enough exposition to enlighten us about Perry`s plight. The dialogue by Richard Wesley is trite and empty; we never get close to Perry.
The racism that Perry encounters too often takes the form of what must have been conceived of as Telling Incidents.
”You`re from New York, you must be a player,” says a white classmate who drags Perry to basketball practice where the coach says to him, with a strange formality, ”I look forward to watching you play.”
He doesn`t make the team and he doesn`t fit in with the school`s hard-party crowd until abandoning his anti-drug ways and opting to supply some dope. All the while he feels the increasing heat of racism-from all sides.
”You don`t belong in Harlem anymore,” his old high school pal and crack connection says. ”You a white boy now.”
He isn`t, of course, but his identity is really getting manhandled. Where are his parents during this time of need? They are barely present after he leaves for prep school. Didn`t he go home on vacations or during the summer?
And it is never clear how deeply he was involved with drugs.
Easy as it might be to understand what sort of frustrations boiled within Perry, what compelled him-a Stanford University scholarship in his hands-to make a fatal error in judgment while walking through a nighttime Harlem park with his brother?
Perry`s story is a sad, frustrating and fascinating one, as it reads in Anson`s book. In this film it takes the form of muted melodrama.
– Much better, or at least much more satisfying as entertainment, is
”Survive the Savage Sea” (8 p.m. Monday, ABC-Ch. 7).
This is a sort of Swiss Family Nightmare, as the idyllic South Seas sailing adventure of Jack and Claire Carpenter (Robert Urich and Ali MacGraw), three of their children and an Aussie goof-off named Wally turns into an ordeal when their boat is sunk by misguided whales.
They take to a raft-dingy vessel and move on, encountering all manner of travail-not the least of which are storms, sharks and starvation-in the weeks they spend sailing toward shipping lanes where they might be spotted.
It is implausible that the starving, waterlogged gang could retain the good humor that they display throughout their journey. Only once does Urich crack, and then not very convincingly.
I was also troubled by the fact that Urich and MacGraw seem to get healthier looking, rather than more sickly, and that the film keeps jumping back to dry land and the anxiety of the Carpenters` eldest daughter, played without emotion by Danielle von Zerneck.
But even with these many troubles, director Kevin James Dobson keeps the action interesting. There`s a fabulous scene in which Urich (or his stuntman) wrestles a giant turtle into the boat, and many other moments that seem too heroic to believe, but make fine viewing.
– On Tuesday, Rick Schroder, who has been stretching himself admirably with nasty-boy roles, tries and fails to be both naughty and nice in ”Miles From Nowhere” (8 p.m., CBS-Ch. 2).
This is essentially the story of a family`s inability to honestly communicate. There is nothing very compelling about watching Schroder spar with his father (James Farentino) over the plight of younger brother Emmett, crippled in a car accident.
The older boy`s commitment to help his brother, admirable as it is, is little more than an excuse for turning up the Schroder-Farentino tension knob. There is some screaming, a romance with a nurse and lots of chatter about Schroder`s taking a college wrestling scholarship or joining the merchant marine. Emmett`s plight pales in light of the self-indulgent whining from his father and brother.
