Last week, a TV critic colleague from Ohio called and, without preamble, inquired, "So, do the interrogation rooms at the Salt Lake City Police Department really look like medieval dungeons?"
"Not as far as I know," I replied. "And Salt Lake doesn't look like a Canadian village, either."
But his was one of the nicer reactions to Sunday's CBS movie "The Elizabeth Smart Story," which was filmed in Halifax, Nova Scotia. It didn't exactly rake in critical praise and what praise it did receive was, for the most part, faint.
" 'The Elizabeth Smart Story' is more tasteful and compelling than expected," wrote the New York Daily News. "That doesn't necessarily make it good — or worth broadcasting in the first place."
Other criticism was considerably more harsh. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette called it "so dreadful, it's occasionally funny."
As did many reviews, the one in the Boston Globe lumped it in with "Saving Jessica Lynch," calling the two TV movies "naive little docudramas that too
obviously spin the facts in favor of the people who 'authorized' them. . . . Neither movie cares much about the details as it hurries to its inevitable, strings-plagued parent-child reunion."
The Hartford Courant panned the movie's acting as "nondescript" and its direction as "workmanlike."
And the paper attacked the movie's timing. "The Smart film joins other recent docudramas, including 'D.C. Sniper,' that have no problem indicting and condemning people who have yet to go to trial. . . . Except for the cross-promotion for the book, 'The Elizabeth Smart Story' could have waited until May sweeps to avoid the technicality of innocent until proved guilty for suspects Brian David Mitchell and Wanda Barzee."
Elizabeth Smart's parents, Ed and Lois, came under fire as well.
A New York Times review commented that the story in the movie "has since been eclipsed by a new mystery: the Smart family's second act, which includes a book . . . and a round of smarmy interviews with television divas from Katie Couric to Oprah Winfrey."
Which is mild compared to the Times columnist who charged that the "tireless and tasteless exploitation of their daughter's trials have made them the most unwelcome parents to invade American living rooms since JonBenet Ramsey's."
Which was only slightly more harsh than the United Features Syndicate review that read, "Since her miraculous discovery and return to her parents, the public sentiment has shifted from joy to exhaustion to irritation, as the Smarts have transformed themselves from victims to ubiquitous media hounds."
But the Smarts also had their defenders. "Charges that Lois and Ed Smart are unduly commercializing their daughter's trauma and triumph seem to ignore the cold, hard fact that movies and books would have emerged anyway," the Dallas Morning News wrote. "In this case they at least have some control over the content. It's hard to blame them for wanting to tell their story firsthand after being burned by numerous unfounded tabloid reports."
And a lot of reviewers were of the opinion that it could have been worse. The San Diego Union-Tribune wrote, "Director Bobby Roth keeps the mood subdued, avoiding the phony histrionics and emotional hype that could easily have made the film an exercise in sensationalism."
Many reviews, including the one in the Los Angeles Daily News, commented on how the movie was "ignoring" allegations of sexual assault in favor of a "story that is presented in a sanitized-for-America's-consumption (format) by CBS."
"Thankfully, authorities discovered Elizabeth, but this film just feels like another violation."
E-MAIL: pierce@desnews.com