BOSTON (MA)
Boston Herald
By Sarah Rodman
Thursday, May 19, 2005 - Updated: 12:52 AM EST
If your heart hasn't already been broken by the priest sex abuse scandal, then Showtime's strong film ``Our Fathers'' will finish the job.
Based on Newsweek editor David France's book ``Our Fathers: The Secret Life of the Catholic Church in an Age of Scandal,'' the two-hour film, airing Saturday at 8 p.m., tells the now well-known story of the cover-up of predatory Catholic priests shuffled from parish to parish in the Boston diocese, leaving scores of damaged children in their wake.
Any tragedy is tough to turn into ``entertainment,'' but this one is particularly difficult - especially for local viewers.
Fortunately, director Dan Curtis and a strong cast manage to avoid playing this as a seedy, exploitative movie of the week. (Curtis did similarly sober work during the Holocaust portion of his miniseries ``War and Remembrance.'')
Much as the Hub-centered ``A Civil Action'' did, ``Our Fathers'' uses as its entry point a lawyer who fought on behalf of the victims, in this case, Mitchell Garabedian (Ted Danson). (Unlike ``Action,'' the Showtime film was shot in Canada.)