`Without Consent,' `Cries From The Heart' Fall Short

"Without Consent," "ABC Sunday Night Movie," 9 p.m., KOMO-TV. "Cries From the Heart," "CBS Sunday Night Movie," 9 p.m., KIRO-TV. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Two "wanna-be" TV movies are vying for your attention Sunday night - ABC's "Without Consent" is often reminiscent of "The Snake Pit" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," while CBS' "Cries From the Heart" may recall aspects of "The Miracle Worker."

Neither will make you forget the originals.

"Without Consent" starts out like your typical movie about your typical dysfunctional suburban family - Jill Eikenberry and Tom Irwin (from "My So-Called Life") play Michelle and Robert Mills, trapped in an empty marriage, snapping at each other and their daughter, Laura, your typically unhappy teenager, played by Jennie Garth (from "Beverly Hills, 90210"). Their son, David, played by Eric Close, has already been in so much trouble he's been banished from the house.

After several big family scenes, Michelle and Tom decide they can no longer cope with Laura - they feel she's become self-destructive - and commit her to Meadowbrook, a private psychiatric clinic, run by Dr. Winslow (Paul Sorvino), that is supposed to do wonders in helping young people get back on the path to normal, constructive lives.

Camp Meadowbrook

Once the parents have left her there, however, Laura quickly discovers Meadowbrook is more like a concentration camp, run by an

iron-fisted staff. Most of the inmates are drugged often enough to keep them placid. Laura tries to tell her parents what Meadowbrook is really like but Winslow is a more convincing witness than Laura. She then decides to go along with the clinic's routine until she can get released after a two-month's stay - until she discovers Winslow also operates an insurance scam: As long as insurance companies continue to pay the clinic's overpriced fees, people don't "get better." When the insurance runs out, they're cured.

"Without Consent" gets pretty melodramatic from time to time, more the fault of Tim Kring's script than Robert Iscove's direction. Garth is convincing as the rebellious Laura and Eikenberry and Irwin are fine as the ineffective and uncomprehending parents.

Johnny Galecki, who is a strong addition to the cast of "Roseanne" in the role of David, does pretty much the same characterization here as one of the Meadowbrook inmates. Gene Lythgow plays another inmate who isn't what he seems. His character suffers from underdevelopment, a weakness in the film, as is the way the whole insurance scam is more or less dropped at the end in favor of a tentative family reunion.

"Without Consent" is supposed to promote family understanding and listening to one another but I wasn't convinced, at the film's end, that things were going to be much better in the future at the Mills household.

Look of `Frontline'

"Cries from the Heart" is yet another "based-on-a-true-story" TV movie although it comes closer to being based on an engrossing "Frontline" episode that reported on "facilitated communication" for autistic children. This allows children, with the help of their teachers, to communicate through computers - but it is also a controversial development. Since the teachers help the children by guiding their arms and hands, there have been charges that it is the teachers, not the children, who are communicating.

The "Frontline" episode concerned a child who, when he began using "facilitated communication," typed messages charging a family member with sexual abuse, something about which the child's teacher could not possibly have known.

For the purposes of this movie, the abuse is supposedly committed by one of the male caregivers at a school for the disadvantaged.

"Cries from the Heart" stars Melissa Gilbert as the mother of an autistic child, with Patty Duke as the teacher at the school who believes in "facilitated communciation." Like "Without Consent," "Cries from the Heart" often gets over-heated. Gilbert tends to want to chew the scenery although Duke gives another of her solid, believable performances as the teacher. The trial scenes are less than convincing - as is the whole business of sexual abuse. The child doesn't seem old enough or wise enough to describe what happened to him, only vaguely hinted at, as "sex."

The scenes involving the "facilitated communication" and attempting to establish contact with Gilbert's autistic son may remind you of scenes in "The Miracle Worker," with which both Gilbert and Duke are more than familiar. Duke played the young Helen Keller on Broadway and in the 1962 movie, (for which she won an Oscar), while the 1979 TV movie had Gilbert playing the young Helen Keller and Patty Duke as Annie Sullivan (originally played by Anne Bancroft on stage and in the first movie).

Worthy addition ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Lakota Woman: Siege at Wounded Knee," 5, 8, 11 p.m. Sunday, TNT. -----------------------------------------------------------------

This new TV movie is part of Turner Broadcasting's ambitious plans to spotlight Native Americans this month. "Lakota Woman" is based on the autobiography Of Mary Crow Dog, co-written with Richard Erdoes, and stars Irene Bedard in the title role.

Many Native Americans are in the large cast, including Joseph Runningfox, Floyd Red Crow Westerman, Pato Hoffman, August Schellenberg as a particularly scary Dick Wilson, and Lawrence Bayne as an equally dynamic Russell Means, leader of the AIM movement.

Busy script

Bill Kerby's script attempts to do two things at once - tell Mary Crow Dog's story, from being sent to a white school as a child to her grown-up rebellion when she came to appreciate her Native American heritage as a member of the AIM group, as well as presenting the story of that group that occupied Wounded Knee in South Dakota in 1973 in an attempt to gain the attention of the U.S. government. Kerby's plan doesn't always work. Under Frank Pierson's direction, the film's best scenes are those involving the conflict between the two groups of Native Americans and the U.S. military.

Bedard is an appealing young actress but those scenes devoted to her life seem sketchy and uninformed. It isn't until the final third of the movie, with the emphasis upon the explosive situation at Wounded Knee, that "Lakota Woman" comes to life.

Still, as an important part of the overall "Native Americans" project, "Lakota Woman" is a worthy addition. It will be repeated Wednesday, Friday and Saturday and Oct. 25 and 29.

Check it out ----------------------------------------------------------------- "American Playhouse: Long Shadows," 10 p.m. Friday, KCTS-TV. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Despite a choppy script and some overly-complicated direction by Sheldon Larry, this co-production between Japanese TV and KCTS-TV is an intriguing drama about the relationship between Edwin 0. Reischauer, who was U.S. ambassador to Japan in the Kennedy administration, and his Japanese-born, American-educated wife, Haru.

It's a combination of living history and personal drama. It covers the period from the mid-1930s, when Haru came to the U.S. to study, until the recent past, noting both a changing Japan, a changing U.S. and their ever-changing relationship. (The movie opens right after Reischauer's death, although the year is not identified.) And it also depicts a loving but complicated personal relationship that had its ups and downs over 34 years.

Good casting

Fumi Dan is excellent as Haru and Matt Frewer, in a bit of off-beat casting, is equally fine as Reischauer. The differences and (and similarities) between the two cultures, and the personalities of the two individuals make for an engrossing story of real people in real life.

It would have been better if the director and scripter Milan Stitt had opted for a straightforward chronological approach, but even so "Long Shadows" gets my vote as the most interesting TV movie being shown this week.