TV Reviews : Pool-Hall Drama Ends Behind the 8-Ball in ‘Kiss Shot’

Whoops. The film career of Whoopi Goldberg has descended from “The Color Purple” to her role in a made-for-TV movie tonight as a pool shark, a la “The Color of Money.” Alas, the color many viewers are likely to be seeing well before the end of “Kiss Shot” (at 9 on Channels 2 and 8) is the color of the inside of their eyelids.

Other than her hair, which is braided and unbowed, the wildly subdued Whoopster is allowed no flamboyance whatsoever in her thankless role as struggling single mother Sarah Collins. Having lost her computer job a scant few months before a major house payment is due, she consoles herself by shooting some 9-ball down at the local hall--whereupon a requisitely charming 13-year-old daughter quips, “Totally awesome! Too bad you can’t get paid for it.” At this point you wait the predictable three or four seconds for the light bulb to go on over Goldberg’s head, right before a commercial break.

It only gets cuter. With the help of manager Max Fleischer (played by Dennis Franz), Goldberg hits the pool-hall circuit, cleaning up at biker bars and metalhead clubs where hulking bad dudes address each other as “jerko” and “scuz.” (Given the gutter mouth of previous theatrical Goldberg features, parents, if not realists, will be grateful for the soap-bar that this picture sticks in its mug.)

A romance rears its ugly head: Filthy rich Kevin Merrick (Dorian Harewood), a bit of a shark on the green himself, wines and dines our heroine. But is he philanthropist or playboy? Goldberg eventually comes to believe the latter, and the former lovebirds (neither of whom seems like pro pool material) end up battling each other in a grudge match, arguing about their soured relationship over a championship-finals tournament table.

Nearly all the actors in the sickly sweet “Kiss Shot,” Goldberg especially, sleepwalk through their parts--the smartest possible move, given Carl Kleinschmitt’s scratch-ball of a script. Director Jerry London resorts to ridiculously ‘60s-like prism photography for much of his pool footage, and though Goldberg obviously boned up on her 9-ball for the production, some of her trick shots are all too obviously edited. Give it the quickest possible kiss-off.