`Hallelujah,' Here's A Film With A Nice Festive Touch

------------------------------------------------------------------ "Hallelujah," "American Playhouse," 9 p.m. Wednesday, Channel 9. ------------------------------------------------------------------

PBS' theatrical Christmas present to viewers this week is a seasonal Christmas fable titled "Hallelujah," commissioned by "American Playhouse."

The original script by Michael Genet mixes the Santa Claus myth with the Christmas story and places it in a contemporary Washington, D.C. This Mary is named Katharine and she gives birth to her son in a garage rather than a stable, while the message of hope is delivered by a minister - in a Santa Claus suit.

If it all sounds rather a jumble, it is, and yet it pretty much works, thanks to appealing performances by a group of fine African-American performers that includes James Earl Jones, Ruth Brown, Keith David, Phylicia Rashad and Dennis Haysbert, under the direction of Charles Lane, whose films include "Sidewalk Stories" and "True Identity."

Haysbert plays the Rev. Oliver Crawford, a young minister who arrives in Washington, D.C., three days before Christmas to be the new preacher at one of the city's most powerful churches. Arriving the same day is Katherine, a beautiful young pregnant woman. Their paths cross, thanks to an activist, Big Willie Thornton (Keith David).

Genet created a complicated plot: By the time Christmas morning rolls around, Katharine has had her baby and found friends, the Rev. Crawford has won over the members of his new church, made peace with his teenage son (played by Deon Richmond), charmed the mayor of Washington, D.C. (played by Rashad), and convinced Big Willie that the city's homeless have a new champion, while a grumpy neighborhood curmudgeon, played by Jones, is turned into an old softie.

It's a tall order but the cast and director Lane bring it off.

Jones, of course, can make even the smallest of roles a standout; David is dynamic as Big Willie and Tracy Douglas is lovely as the mother-to-be. And special mention should go to Suzzanne Douglas as Eunice, the church secretary, who brings welcome humor to the story.

While Haysbert is ostensibly the star of the show as the Rev. Crawford, his performance is disappointing - he makes the man a dignified character but a stiff and wooden one, as well.

But that fails to dull the Christmas spirit that is at the heart of "Hallelujah," a film that could well become holiday staple.

NO CHEER HERE

------------------------------------------------------------------ "The Only Way Out," "ABC Sunday Night Movie," 9 p.m., Channel 4. ------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------ "Scattered Dreams: The Kathryn Messenger Story," "CBS Sunday Movie," 9 p.m., Channel 7. ------------------------------------------------------------------

No need to look for Christmas cheer in these two depressing movies, the first-of which involves murder and violence while the second is a docudrama about a transient family in Florida that is broken up when the parents are jailed on a trumped-up charge and their children put up for adoption.

In "The Only Way Out," John Ritter plays a successful architect in the process of divorcing his wife while living with another divorcee; Henry Winkler plays a psychopath who moves in on Ritter's wife. Stephanie Faracy plays Ritter's wife and Julianne Phillips his girlfriend. It's all exceedingly messy, not to mention hard on Ritter's kids, but it's difficult to get worked up about any of this since all the characters behave in such a juvenile, stupid manner.

"Scattered Dreams," set in the 1950s, is meant to invoke our sympathy as Tyne Daly and Gerald McRaney play the unlettered, dirt-poor farmers to whom just about everything except a fatal illness happens. It's such a gloomy litany of horrendous events that befall them that it leaves no time much for charact-erization - they start seeming to be little more than just stereotypical victims.

Things do pick up in the final third of the movie when Daly's character gets out of prison and sets about getting her kids back. But by then Karen Croner's script and Neema Barnette's direction are so over the edge that "Scattered Dreams" has long ago lost any sense of reality and turned into some kind of Grand Guignol horror film.

PLENTY OF SYMPATHY

------------------------------------------------------------------ "No Place Like Home," 8 p.m. Monday, Channel 9. ------------------------------------------------------------------

Kathryn Hunt's brief (25-minute) film about a young girl and her dysfunctional family in Seattle arouses a great deal more sympathy than anything that happens in the two hours of "Shattered Dreams," partly because it's so quiet and underplayed.

In brief film fragments, we get an all-too-clear picture of the usual problems that dog the underclass - poverty, domestic violence, too little education, unrealistic hopes and dreams.

It is, in short, a devastating portrait - and while it will be followed Monday night by an in-studio discussion of welfare rights and reform, moderated by Leila Gorbman, I doubt much will be contributed that isn't already plain to see in Hunt's film.

EARLY MORNING INSPIRATION

------------------------------------------------------------------ "Playing for Peace," 1:30 a.m. Monday, Channel 9. ------------------------------------------------------------------

If you're searching for inspiration, you can find it at the odd hour of 1:30 a.m. Monday, which is the time slot into which Channel 9 has put this excellent documentary by Peter Rosen.

Yes, it's dreamy, it's naive - but at the same time it may also bring tears to your eyes as you watch several young people from warring factions in the Middle East join with a group of young Americans to make music at a chamber music school in New Hampshire.

The school is home to the Apple Hill Chamber Players who, in 1992, toured Israel, Egypt, Jordan and Syria, giving concerts but also awarding scholarships to promising young musicians who later came to New Hampshire to study.

Watching them make music together and listening to their comments about how they came to realize they were more alike than different fuels the belief that there is no sensible reason for nationalities to constantly be at war with one another. At the same time it reminds us of the truth in the old saying that music does indeed have power to soothe the savage breast.