Television Reviews : ‘FAMILY SINS’

“Family Sins” is the overwrought title of an underwrought film (Sunday at 9 p.m., CBS Channels 2 and 8). If the title suggests something juicy, forget it; this is one of the most relentlessly morose TV movies within memory.

In plot as well as in tone, it plays like a prequel to “Ordinary People.” As in that film, the key incident is a boating accident involving two brothers. The one who survives is overcome by guilt--almost to the point of suicide.

The brothers live in gloomiest suburbia, the sons of a stern, demanding father (James Farentino) and a somewhat aloof mother (Jill Eikenberry). Eleven-year-old Bryan (Thomas Wilson Brown) can do nothing right in his father’s eyes; nine-year-old Keith (Andrew Bednarski) can do nothing wrong.

Writer George Rubino makes the problems of this family so obvious that it’s almost as if the movie were designed for a Psychology 101 classroom instead of a mass audience. This clinical posture is also apparent in the way Rubino scrupulously avoids manipulative displays of emotion.

By foreshadowing the boating accident in the very first scene, Rubino even spoils whatever slight suspense might be generated from wondering where the film is going.

The only coloring applied to the film is in the self-conscious score by Elizabeth Swados. But these musical attempts to exalt this material into some form of primeval human drama serve only to reinforce the pervasive chilliness of the film, which is also emphasized in cinematographer Denis C. Lewiston’s drained-out images. The performances, directed by Jerrold Freedman, are limited to clenched brows and clouded looks.

Critics who complained that “Ordinary People” was too much like a TV movie might revise upward their estimation of that film after seeing how a real TV movie treats similar material.