Television Review : ‘Pancho Barnes’ Never Gets Off the Ground

Some movies manage to be too long and too skimpy at the same time. Biographical films that try to cover decades, without focusing on anything, usually suffer from this condition. Such is “Pancho Barnes,” a 3-hour tribute to a pioneer woman pilot (tonight at 8 on Channels 2 and 8).

The script by John Michael Hayes covers the period from Florence Barnes’ days as a Pasadena teen-ager, circa 1920, to the aftermath of World War II. Perhaps this is supposed to give Valerie Bertinelli, playing Barnes, a chance to show off her ability to age. But it doesn’t work out that way.

Bertinelli’s performance is full of feminist-role-model fire (she likes to say things like “hell’s bells”), and she isn’t afraid to look dirty. But she’s never less than cute and she never looks older than, say, 30.

Furthermore, the attempt to cover so many years offers a strictly once-over-lightly version of Barnes’ life. For example, it’s interesting to watch Barnes attempt to form a stunt pilots’ union in defiance of Howard Hughes, but we never learn whether the union signed a contract. We see Barnes lose her house to the bank, even though she says she has “plenty of money,” with no explanation of what really happened.

The script also sanitizes Barnes. It doesn’t mention her commercial barnstorming days, when she reportedly tossed unwitting audience volunteers out of her plane, pulling the parachute cord from the plane after they were already falling. Nor do we hear about her brief marriages to a flight student and a magician, or of how the Air Force accused her of running a bordello, which prompted her to sue.

We do get lots of pretty but repetitive shots of old airplanes going through their paces. Richard T. Heffron directed for producer Blue Andre.