Ruling: 'Swing Vote' fails

On April 19, ABC intends to back a truck up to your living room in order to unload a meretricious pile of claptrap titled "Swing Vote." I heartily recommend that you do not accept delivery.

The two-hour made-for-TV movie imagines that the Supreme Court has reversed its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion nationwide through all nine months of pregnancy.

As a result, each state has passed its own laws on abortion, leading a woman in Alabama to be charged with first-degree murder for killing her unborn baby.

A mess

On the contrary, the result is a confused and flaccid mess larded with melodrama and filled with silly fantasies about the Court, including its meeting in emergency session for no apparent reason, a judge being persuaded to change his vote because another judge sings "Danny Boy" to him and justices switching their votes as the final decision is read.

Given the cast, viewers might have expected something a little more substantive: Harry Belafonte, Kate Nelligan, James Whitmore, Robert Prosky and Milo O'Shea. Andy Garcia, who co-produced the movie, plays the lead character, Joseph Kirkland, a lawyer newly appointed to the Court. He quickly becomes Super-Judge, visiting a pro-abortion rally in disguise, meeting clandestinely with the plaintiff to sip tea and matching wits with the Chief Justice.

Major flaw

In place of that, we have some really clumsy scenes: an ugly argument between Kirkland and his wife that comes out of nowhere, for example, and a meeting between him and his ailing predecessor that is incomprehensible because we are not told what it is they're talking about.

Throughout the two hours, both the pro-abortion and pro-life side get to make their arguments, with the latter fairly represented by an activist described as "the Martin Luther King of the pro-life movement" and by a woman who gave up her child for adoption -- to the Kirklands.

Credulity stretched

This ruling, delivered by Garcia with solemn tones and backed by pretentious music, is presented as something startling and original. It ain't, and neither is this movie.

As for stretching credulity, would judges who held that abortion was wrong for two hours and who voted against it a year before be so moved just by Kirkland's reading of the decision that they would suddenly come over to his side, voting on the bench with "me, too" grins?

ABC is sure to advertise "Swing Vote" as serious, provocative and timely. It is actually full of itself, and any room that is left over is stuffed with hooey.

(04-15-99) [[In-content Ad]]