By John Levesque | Seattle PI

A Town Without Christmas 

WHAT: Two-hour TV movie about a reporter and an author who learn about hope while searching for a missing child

CAST: Patricia Heaton, Rick Roberts, Peter Falk and Ernie Hudson

WHEN / WHERE: Sunday at 9 p.m., KIRO/7

RATING: TV-PG

GRADE: C-

"A Town Without Christmas," airing Sunday on CBS, is such a film -- so sloppily made that anyone who ever started a term paper the day before it was due can sheepishly appreciate its utter lack of polish.

For instance, there's a scene that purportedly takes place at 5 p.m. in late December in a small town in central Washington, yet the sun is shining brightly and the shadows on the ground make it look as if it's about 2 in the afternoon. What's up with that?

And are we really supposed to believe a TV station in Seattle would somehow be unaware of a story that has attracted the attention of all the major networks?

These are the kinds of implausibilities that make "A Town Without Christmas" difficult to take. Spawned, we presume, in the same industrial park that cranks out a dozen or so bad Christmas movies each year, "A Town Without Christmas" is the sort of paint-by-numbers holiday drama you can follow while paying the bills or negotiating an arms-limitation treaty. And maybe that's the whole idea. This is a busy time of year -- we're wrapping presents and trimming the tree and wondering where we put the extension cords -- so the networks don't want to tax us too much, lest we wander off in search of something even less cerebral.

But someone needs to say, "Enough!" Sure, we expect to see sentimental films during the Christmas season. It's a great tradition, like trying to find the burned-out bulb in a string of tree lights. But we should rise up as one to demand that these feel-good films be intelligent and challenging, and not an insult to those of use with IQs above that of a pine cone.

Patricia Heaton, my favorite member of the "Everybody Loves Raymond" cast, plays hard-nosed TV reporter M.J. Jensen. She's the heartless, humorless type who, by film's end, will have rediscovered her heart and her humor with the help of a really nice person. (I know it seems as if I'm giving away the ending, but after the first five minutes you'll know the ending, too. Consider it a public service.)

The really nice person would be David Reynolds (Rick Roberts), a struggling fiction writer. He and M.J. are both drawn to David's economically depressed hometown of Seacliff, Wash., by a bizarre story about a young boy who says in a letter to Santa that he wants to leave this world because he doesn't want to burden his struggling parents. A frantic search ensues, and we ultimately learn a valuable lesson about how not to alienate kids.

Trouble is, the lesson is delivered with the subtlety of a yule log to the forehead, which raises two questions:

1. Does CBS really think the American audience is this slack-jawed?

2. Did anyone at CBS actually watch this movie?

Heaton, who is enormously likable in "Everybody Loves Raymond," does her best to be the grinch of the journalistic trade, but we all know better. Roberts' Mr. Nice Guy also is hampered by the sort of tedious plot development that occurs through dialogue that no one would ever engage in.

The only bright spot is Peter Falk as a crusty angel -- what, you thought there'd be no Christmas angel? -- but Falk's scenes are too limited to make a difference. Better to skip "A Town Without Christmas" and tend to the decorations.