The problem with doing a movie about the greatest child star of all time, Shirley Temple, is obvious. Who, exactly, do you cast as the greatest child star of all time?
In a way, it makes no difference. No matter who the producers of "Child Star: The Shirley Temple Story" chose, the child couldn't possibly measure up to the legend.
This is a no-win situation for everyone, including the viewers.
Not that the "Wonderful World of Disney" movie "Child Star" (Sunday, 6 p.m., ABC/Ch. 4) is awful. And 10-year-old Ashley Rose Orr is far from the worst child actor you'll see on TV this week.
She bears some resemblance to Temple. And she tries hard, though it would have been better if director Nadia Tass had called on Orr to act instead of trying to do a Rich Little-esque imitation of Temple.
And if playing a legend weren't already too much for any 10-year-old to take on, how about playing a 5-year-old? Orr is called on to play Temple from the ages of 5 through 10, which is not only a physical impossibility but confuses the storyline because there's no sense that years pass — it's the same girl throughout most of the movie.
I hesitate to pick too much on a 10-year-old doing the best she can, but there are unfortunate parallels between Orr and the character she's playing. In one sequence of the film, Shirley has difficulty crying on camera; in another sequence, Orr is called on to cry and comes up short. Very short.
All of which is too bad, because Temple's is a compelling story. It's difficult for us to imagine, given the distance of more than six decades, a child who was the biggest movie star on earth for three years (1935-38) and near the top for several additional years.
"Child Star" tells the story of young Shirley, whose mother, Gertrude (Connie Britton), was a kinder, gentler stage mother, leading her daughter to a contract at Fox and mega-stardom. Her father, George (Colin Friels) is less involved, although there's a goofy bit with him having his tonsils out so that Gertrude could give birth to a girl. And he didn't manage his daughter's money well.
The TV movie is at its best when it's telling the story of Hollywood in the '30s — the days of the big studios when the stars were both protected and exploited by their bosses. And there are attempts to put the story in the context of its times. Shirley Temple was very much a product of her times, when a combination of her natural talent and appeal and a public weighed down by the Great Depression and looking for diversion made her a superstar before anyone started using that term.
But bad imitations are not the sincerest form of flattery. And the movie ends on a false note, leaving viewers with the impression that Temple embarked on a revived film career during her teen years.
Yes, she made a few movies then, but she never came close to the stardom she achieved as a child. And to imply otherwise in the attempt to find a happy ending for "Child Star" is downright deceptive.
How much better it would have been to end the telefilm with an afterword about the success Shirley Temple Black found outside of Hollywood, as a wife, mother, civic leader, delegate to the U.N. General Assembly, U.S. chief of protocol and ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia. But there was not a word about that in "Child Star."
More's the pity.
Executive producers Melissa Joan Hart ("Sabrina the Teenage Witch") and her mother, Paula Hart, and their team are as overmatched by the material as is the movie's star. (Another Hart, Melissa's sister, Emily Anne, plays Temple as a teenager.) And, while Temple herself is listed as a consultant — Joe Wiesenfeld's script is based on her autobiography — it doesn't seem to have helped.
You can't recapture this kind of magic.
E-mail: pierce@desnews.com