Be careful what you wish for
Lifetime's new made-for-TV movie "More of Me" is your by-the-book post-feminist fantasy. There is nothing remotely surprising about its tale, in which a woman divides into three separate sex-role personalities that have to be reconciled in the end.
It stars former "Saturday Night Live" trouper Molly Shannon, who at least in this instance proves to be a really bad dramatic actress, and I mean really bad. As dryly effective as she was in "Year of the Dog," here she's just stiff and mannered.
Yet, for all that, I can't bring myself to slag "More of Me," which debuts at 8 p.m. Saturday on Lifetime. As predictable as the story might be, its common sense can't be denied, and Shannon has a disarming way about her, enhanced by the easy appeal of Steven Weber as her husband.
And when she throws herself into a belly dance with all the gusto of her old "SNL" Mary Katherine Gallagher character, it's a hoot. If you're watching TV at all on the wasteland that has become Saturday night, "More of Me" is painlessly pleasant viewing, even if it doesn't constitute appointment television.
Shannon plays Alice, an environmental activist, wife and mother -- not necessarily in that order. The opening finds her literally up a tree, as she tries to halt construction of a bridge that would mean destroying the spot where her husband proposed to her. It's additionally complicated in that her husband, Rex, is the civil engineer overseeing the project.
When her son suddenly comes down with a stomach virus, however, her activism gets put on the back burner. "I can't be two places at once," she phones her partner, "and right now I'm entrenched in vomit."
So, like a character in a fairy tale, she expresses a rash desire while standing in front of a triple mirror. "I wish there was more of me," she says. Out of the mirrors step a businesslike attorney, a funky selfless mother and a hedonistic sexpot. "Oh my God, I've gone to pieces, haven't I?" Alice says.
At first, of course, it's the best of all possible worlds. The attorney is off to fight the powers that be, while the mom has a free hand to wipe both ends of her son, and the sexpot sets out to give her husband a "piece" -- and I don't mean of homemade pie. They all tell Alice to just "relax."
"What's that?" Alice replies.
Yet there's neither rest nor relaxation to be had once the three disparate personalities start bumping up against one another and creating completely different expectations for everyone in Alice's life. When they're not confusing everyone else, they're clashing with each other.
"Can you stop carbo-loading?" the sexpot on a treadmill demands of the attorney as she has a power breakfast. "I'm trying to burn some fat here."
As a comedienne, Shannon loves playing the vamp. She's not quite as adept at the other roles, because they're not as fun. In any case, Alice discovers that only she can reconcile their various ambitions -- "Challenging as it is, I need to be my whole self," she says -- only to find that she's almost disappeared from her own life. She has to wrest control from her various selves.
As a variation on "Big" for "The Second Sex," it couldn't be more obvious. Yet it's good-humored and well-intentioned, so that even when Shannon comes off as if she's slumming on basic cable it's still engaging and entertaining. If it seems as if there were one Molly Shannon who did "SNL" and another who does feature films and another who does TV hack work like this, she nevertheless manages to bring enough of herself to bear to make "More of Me" at least watchable. It's not going to alter anyone's attitude toward feminism, but it is decent viewing -- for a Saturday night anyway.
Remotely interesting: WLS Channel 7 gets the local holiday season going on TV by airing the Magnificent Mile Lights Festival on Michigan Avenue live in high definition from 6 to 7 p.m. Saturday.
TBS is polling viewers on the "Funniest Commercials of the Year" at its veryfunnyads.com Web site through Nov. 29. The results will be used in the annual special with host Kevin Nealon set to run Dec. 26.
"SpongeBob SquarePants" posted its largest audience ever with 9 million tuning in to Monday's debut of "Atlantis SquarePantis."
"Friday Night With John Callaway" runs an old interview with the late Norman Mailer at 7:30 p.m. today on WTTW Channel 11. … A nuclear accident in Russia is the starting point for the HBO movie "PU-239," debuting at 7 p.m. Saturday on the premium-cable channel. … The History Channel looks at the situation in Iraq in "Baghdad Diary" at 9 p.m. Saturday, then shifts gears for a profile of "Andrew Jackson" at 7 p.m. Sunday.
End of the dial: Personality-talk WGN 720-AM remained atop the ratings when monthly local Arbitrends were released this week. Urban-contemporary WGCI 107.5-FM continued to fall to fifth, with all-news WBBM 780-AM, Spanish-language WOJO 105.1-FM and adult-urban WVAZ 102.7-FM in between.
"Midwest Ballroom" host John Russell Ghrist is asking listeners to send in a list of their favorite holiday songs. He'll use them to tabulate the "Top 25 Christmas Songs of All Time," to be played on his show Dec. 8. Send lists to Midwest Ballroom, P.O. Box 1073, Dundee, IL 60118. The show airs at 5 p.m. Saturdays on WDCB 90.9-FM.
Waste Watcher's choice
"The Asphalt Jungle" is a classic caper movie, with Sterling Hayden playing a hood trying to organize and pull off a heist. John Huston's direction is definitive film noir, and look for a young Marilyn Monroe as a gun moll. It's at 7 p.m. today on Turner Classic Movies.