'FREEDOM SONG' TUNES INTO TRUTH.

Byline: David Kronke TV Critic

The Civil Rights drama has traditionally been one of the trickiest genres for Hollywood to get right. The plot line usually features an hour or so of one-dimensional evil-Klan mayhem followed by a cathartic finale involvIng copious kicking of cracker butt. Hollywood generally feels the need to include white heroes to parachute in and protect the nobly victimized African-Americans, lest white audiences feel the movie is picking on them because of the color of their skin. And since it's not an era many in our country can be particularly proud of, there's often a caster-oil, civics-lesson patina coating the entire production.

``Freedom Song,'' directed and co-written by Phil Alden Robinson (``Field of Dreams'') and starring Danny Glover, Vondie Curtis Hall and Vicellous Reon Shannon, takes the road less traveled. Focusing squarely on the non-violent efforts of blacks themselves, using civil disobedience to call attention to their plight, and eliminating revenge as a motivating factor, ``Freedom Song'' is more understated than the usual civil rights saga - and much richer emotionally.

Shannon stars as Owen, a teen-ager growing up in a small Mississippi town. As a child, he had the bad sense in the late 1940s to step into a whites-only diner; his father, Will (Glover), was subsequently humiliated but swore to his son that one day they would sit, welcome, at the counter and share a meal. It's now the early '60s, and change is in the air: Protests against segregation are sweeping the South, and a soft-spoken French teacher from Chicago (Hall) has come to town to help blacks register to vote.

Obstacles of course virulently block them from their goal, but the most crippling of these may be the fear of older blacks who know exactly what they're up against. As Will explains to his son, their family may not have much, but they have a relatively content life given their constraints; protests likely won't solve anything and may even make life more difficult. Glover's expressions beautifully convey his character's conflicted pain.

Shannon likewise is excellent as the young man who discovers that the chip on his shoulder is virtually genetic and learns how to put it to good use. But the tenor of the film is perfectly embodied in the subdued, clear-eyed performance of Vondie Curtis Hall. Instead of the usual charismatic, stirring, baritone-voiced sort of character the genre dictates should be in this position, Hall, decked out in nerdy horn-rimmed glasses, is small, quiet, resolved to the seeming insurmountability of his task and filled with the weary resignation of generations of oppressed men and women.

It is his character who must confront the movement's most difficult conundrum: Is the cause worth the lives of the people it presumes to aid?

The thoughtful manner in which these questions are addressed and the sagacious fashion in which heroism manifests itself makes ``Freedom Song'' a solid, satisfying film - and a welcome tonic to the exploitative escapades elsewhere on TV this evening.

The facts

--The show: ``Freedom Song.''

--What: Drama about the civil rights movement in the 1960s South.

--Who: Vicellous Reon Shannon, Danny Glover, Vondie Curtis Hall.

--Where: TNT.

--When: 7, 9:30 and midnight tonight, also Thursday, Saturday and March 5, 8 and 11.

--Our rating: Three and one half stars.

Imperfect case, imperfect miniseries

Story of JonBenet murder confuses and bores on CBS 

If there's anything Americans enjoy watching, it's good old-fashioned human suffering, particularly if it's real humans who are doing the suffering. So thank heavens CBS and ABC are around, eager to sate us with a couple of protracted miniseries focusing on the lurid. After all, you can't spell ``miseries'' without ``miniseries.''

Worst things first. Lawrence Schiller's ``Perfect Murder, Perfect Town'' offers a surprising new theory on Boulder, Colo.'s torturous JonBenet Ramsey murder case: At the time of the murder, it argues, JonBenet was replaced with a giant, incredibly fake-looking doll. The Ramseys, in their profuse grief, and Boulder authorities, in their abundant incompetence, simply neglected to notice the switch.

``Perfect Murder, Perfect Town'' offers all the proof you need that a nation's prurient fascination with a sordid topic really shouldn't be justification enough for pounding out four hours of prime-time TV on the subject. It's a shrill, meandering and confused concoction that makes curious decisions regarding what parts of this story deserve copious amounts of screen time (a tabloid reporter's sleazy antics) and what doesn't (the investigation).

The murder occurs very early in the film, when John Ramsey (Ronny Cox) discovers his daughter's body - clearly and risibly a tricked-up doll - in the basement and shuffles it, moist blue rubber arms sticking ramrod upright over its and John's heads, upstairs. This begins what must be a solid five minutes of on-screen wailing and unremitting caterwauling from wife Patsy (Marg Helgenberger) while everyone else looks a little bewildered, and all you can think is, what the hell were these people's thinking?

From there, the movie lurches into its dramatically parched investigation of the crime. Kris Kristofferson, whose eyes seem to be literally receding into his skull, plays Lou Smit, a respected outside investigator and the main proponent of the theory that the Ramseys are innocent of wrongdoing. After he's introduced as an independent hotshot, we see him gazing vacantly at the Ramseys' home and don't see him again until he ambles up to the Ramseys and tells them he hasn't turned much up. So just what has he been doing in all that time?

Basically, what is shown of the investigation is reduced to police bickering with the district attorney's office, led by Alex Hunter (Ken Howard), over whether there's enough evidence to arrest Patsy: Yes, one guy says, no, another replies; there's your high-tension scene, repeated sporadically throughout the production.

By the end of tonight's segment, when the cops are finally sitting down to talk with the Ramseys, one marvels at how little has actually been accomplished in the previous two hours. In the second half, Schiller tallies up the pros and cons regarding the Ramseys' possible guilt and throws in a body count of the careers upended by the investigative fiasco. In truth, though, there's little here anyone who has even casually followed the ordeal doesn't already know.

What makes ``Perfect Murder'' a perfect mess is Schiller's assumption that because the case has been tabloid fodder for years, it's automatically riveting as a story. There's no effort to depict anyone as more than one-dimensional, the tactical jabbering is obfuscating and tedious, and a dramatic story about not accomplishing anything is, practically by definition, not terribly engaging. JonBenet junkies - and there are plenty - will no doubt be glued to their set; viewers with lives are advised to look elsewhere.

The facts

--What: Docudrama about the murder of JonBenet Ramsey.

--Who: Ronny Cox, Marg Helgenberger, Kris Kristofferson. Where: CBS (Channel 2).

--When: 9 tonight and Wednesday.

-Our rating: One and one half stars.

How tide turned for Beach Boys

If you want to lend some weighty importance, however unearned, to your story, just subtitle it an ``American'' something. Earlier this month, we had ``Sally Hemings: An American Scandal.'' Now we have ``The Beach Boys: An American Family.''

There is something inherently American in this twisted saga, where the buoyant melodies and soaring harmonies serve as a grimly ironic counterpoint to the realities behind the music. Writer Kirk Ellis and director Jeff Bleckner get off to a decent start in tonight's installment but get lost in Part 2 as the band's story splinters off into myriad oblique and bizarre directions.

Narratively speaking, a serious movie version of the Beach Boys should probably end with the spectacular flameout of ``Smile,'' Brian Wilson's lost aural masterpiece. Much of the material from recording sessions burned in a suspicious studio fire; Brian destroyed most of the rest in a pique of paranoia, though in this film, he simply tosses the tapes into a fireplace after someone tells him the work's no good.

It was at that point that the group was spent, more or less, as a creative force - their sunny music, celebrating Southern California before the thermal-inversion haze days, had become irrelevant in the fog of psychedelia and edgier, angrier music coming in reaction to Vietnam. The group had pretty much peaked commercially, too, with only repackaged - and re-repackaged, and re-re-repackaged - collections of hits making an impression on the pop charts after that point.

Ending there, too, would have prevented the dissipation of the story as the sundry members wandered off on their own quixotic adventures. This is what most confounds Ellis and Bleckner as their story rather arbitrarily hops about the Beach Boys' ravaged mindscapes until it lands upon what can be pawned off as a nominally happy ending.

Part 1, airing tonight, relates your standard-issue pop-band's-rise-to- the-top story competently enough. Brian Wilson (Frederick Weller) is the burgeoning musical genius; brother Dennis (Nick Stabile) is the pseudo-rebel, and Carl (Ryan Northcott) hits his marks and stays in the background. They're joined by Mike Love (Matt Letscher), Brian's chief collaborator and voice of reason (and the guy most sympathetically depicted here) and other musicians at various times in the group's history.

The film focuses on the pressures placed upon Brian, but only superficially. Here, it seems as though he was simply knocking out a string of hit singles when in reality, he was churning out entire albums - some 10 in three years - as well as writing and producing significant chunks of music for several other acts.

At times, Weller does a fairly respectable impersonation of Brian; at others, though, he recalls nothing so much as Jeff Daniels in ``Dumb and Dumber''; the depictions of life at Brian's mansion look like something out of a groovier but no less campy version of ``Reefer Madness.''

``The Beach Boys'' isn't bad, just misguided: Nostalgia buffs - that is, the group's core audience - won't be anticipating the wallow into dementia, and fans of the seamier side of rise-and-collapse biopics probably prefer their subjects' surfaces to be less freshly scrubbed in the first place.

The facts

--The show: ``The Beach Boys: An American Family.''

--What: Docudrama about the classic California pop ensemble.

--Who: Frederick Weller, Matt Letscher, Kevin Dunn, Nick Stabile, Alley Mills, Ryan Northcott.

--Where: ABC (Channel 7).

--When:-- 9 tonight and Monday.

--Our rating: Two stars.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo: (1) Dyanne Iandoli is the ill-fated JonBenet Ramsey in ``Perfect Murder, Perfect Town,'' a four-hour miniseries on CBS.

(2) Vicellous Reon Shannon, left, and Danny Glover star in ``Freedom Song,'' a different kind of civil-rights drama on TNT.

(3) Ned Vaughn, left, Ryan Northcott, Nick Stabile, Frederick Weller and Matt Letscher don matching costumes in a scene from ``The Beach Boys: An American Family.''--The show: ``Perfect Murder, Perfect Town.''