TV REVIEW : ‘Take Me Home Again’ an Affecting Trip

“Take Me Home Again,” in spirit, might be the heartiest Christmas story you’ll see on TV this season, although it’s not about Christmas.

The casting is hard to resist. Kirk Douglas and Craig T. Nelson play a father and son who embark on a pilgrimage, fleeing the old man’s stodgy family environment and trekking across the country to fulfill the elder’s wish to die in the same house and bed in which he was born.

They have not agreed on much since the son left behind his own wife (Bess Armstrong), went AWOL in the Vietnam War and disappeared. But now, 20 years later, the son is the old man’s lifeline--the only one in an oppressive, extended family with enough courage to help his ailing father sneak out from under a coddling wife (Bonnie Bartlett) and callow in-laws.

As they hit the country’s bucolic back roads, the odyssey is fraught with father-son wounds that flare up in roadhouses and motels. There’s forgiveness for choices made and, not unfeelingly, love re-emerges before the end of the journey.

En route, humor and social observations--such as the father’s tirade against fast food joints with their plastic utensils and hard pancakes compared to his memory of cozy, warm diners--enliven Tom McLoughlin’s direction and the script by Ernest Thompson (“On Golden Pond”). The latter also has a small role as a protective handyman in the movie, which he adapted from Lamar Herrin’s novel, “The Lies Boys Tell.”

The pacing turns a bit cluttered and overcrowded with worried family members crazily pursuing the spirited vagabonds all the way to the West Coast in what looks like a parody of a silent movie car chase. Happily, most of the bumps in the road are expressive detours, especially the father and son’s amusing hustle of a stuffy trio of golfers.

* “Take Me Home Again” airs at 9 p.m. Sunday on NBC Channels 4, 36 and 39.