`Mandrell Story' Lacks The `Heart' Of Its Namesake

----------------------------------------------------------------- "Get to the Heart: The Barbara Mandrell Story," "CBS Sunday Movie," 9 p.m., KIRO-TV. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Television's "Sunday Night Movie Wars" begin in earnest tonight with five new made-for-TV movies competing for viewers - CBS' "Barbara Mandrell Story," ABC's "Two Came Back," NBC's "Cloned," Showtime's "Elmore Leonard's Gold Coast" and The Family Channel's "Married to a Stranger." "Cloned" was unavailable for previewing, but the others are not likely to deter anyone from watching "The X-Files."

"Get to the Heart" is what movie studios used to call a "bio-pic," a film about a showbiz personality that provided plenty of opportunities for musical numbers alternating with scenes about their struggles to reach stardom.

Unfortunately, "The Barbara Mandrell Story" fails to do that entertainer justice. Maureen McCormick, best known as Marsha Brady from "The Brady Bunch," looks perky but fails to communicate any of the electric personality and the burning desire to perform that made Mandrell a star. That's clear throughout the movie, based on memories of TV appearances by Mandrell, and it is reinforced in the final scenes when Mandrell steps forth to play herself in a scene about her comeback after a serious automobile acccident.

While Mandrell strived tirelessly to become a star, she had a loving and steadfast husband (played by Greg Kean) and supportive parents (played by Dwight Schultz and Lisa Blount), so there's not a lot of dramatic conflict in her home life.

The accident that nearly took Mandrell's life and left her confused and depressed for a period was the only real conflict scripter Linda Bergman had to work with. More music - and a different performer playing Mandrell - could have made this a more involving movie, more akin to Michele Lee's interpretation of country star Dottie West in a previous CBS movie.

`TWO CAME BACK HAS FAMILIAR LOOK ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Two Came Back," "ABC Sunday Night Movie," 9 p.m., KOMO-TV. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Like the theatrical movie, "White Squall," and a previous ABC docudrama, 1993's "Desperate Journey," "Two Came Back" is concerned with a catastrophe at sea.

"Desperate Journey" was about a woman (Mel Harris) sailing a boat from the Carolinas to New Jersey, trapped on a lifeboat after the sailboat sinks in a storm. "Two Came Back," also based on a true story, concerns five young people trapped on a lifeboat after their boat, sailing from San Diego to Vancouver, B.C., is sunk in a storm at sea.

Melissa Joan Hart, of "Sabrina, the Teenage Witch," is the star and her companions include two ex-boyfriends, played by Jonathan Brandis and David Gail. Jon Pennell is the inept captain of the ship and Susan Walters plays his sexy layabout companion. Susan Sullivan has the thankless role of Hart's nagging mom who bugs the Coast Guard to search for the missing vessel.

"Two Came Back" is predictable but the scenes of the sinking of the sailboat are very believable, far more convincing than later scenes of the survivors in a raft supposedly floating in the vast Pacific Ocean.

`GOLD COAST' HAS ITS SCARY MOMENTS ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Elmore Leonard's Gold Coast," 8 p.m. Sunday, Showtime. -----------------------------------------------------------------

It's difficult to make a film noir on the sunny Florida coast but that's the mood this film, based on a novel by Leonard, keeps striving for. (It should have been shot in black and white.)

It's the classic situation: Young, dazzling, very rich widow (Marg Helgenberger) of a sleazy mob boss finds his will forbids her to have any future relationships, a rule to be enforced by a bodyguard (Jeff Kober) who has his own plans for both the widow and her money. Complications arise when a small-time hood (David Caruso) shows up for money he claims the mob boss owes him and falls for the widow.

Director Peter Weller and scripter Harley Peyton work hard but the film's moodiest, darkest moments are always being illuminated by all that sunshine. Helgenberger is good as the ambitious but not too bright widow - and she looks spectacular - but the film is easily stolen by Kober who turns the amoral bodyguard into one of the scariest screen characterizations since Richard Widmark pushed that wheelchair-bound old lady down the stairs.

As for Caruso, maybe his new CBS series, "Michael Hayes," will revive his career. Here he couldn't be less charismatic.

THIS `STRANGER' SHOULD BE AVOIDED ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Married to a Stranger," 7 p.m. Sunday, The Family Channel. -----------------------------------------------------------------

That ex-"Angel", Jaclyn Smith, turns up again as Megan, a woman who hits her head on a kitchen cupboard door and immediately forgets her 20-year marriage to Robert Clohessy and their teenage daughter, played by Katharine Isobel. Megan thinks she's 16 again.

The medical situation seems believable enough and Clohessy is likable as the frustrated husband, with Louise Fletcher and Ed Lauter satisfactory as Megan's parents. But a lot of palaver in Susan Black's script about how Smith's character is a potentially brilliant artist is embarrassingly phony, as is Kim Coates' characterization as a psychiatrist who works miracles on Megan's memory.