‘Cleopatra,’ ‘Jesse’ Land at the Top of the Trash Heap

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears: I come to bury “Cleopatra,” not to praise it.

What swell trash, though. Make that docu trash.

As is Sunday night’s other TV biography on NBC, “The Jesse Ventura Story,” which though amusing in spots is about as authentic as the pro wrestling circus that generated its palooka protagonist, whose 1998 election as Minnesota governor stunned the political establishment.

Gorgeously filmed in Morocco, ABC’s “Cleopatra” is another lavish two-parter from Robert Halmi Sr., along with Robert Halmi Jr., this one infinitely more rewarding than “Noah’s Ark,” the former’s biblical ode to Henny Youngman and the Borscht Belt that aired earlier this month on NBC.

The script by Stephen Harrigan and Anton Diether follows Cleopatra’s fabled reign as queen of Egypt and her tumultuous affairs with Julius Caesar and Marc Antony in the 1st century BC. Although the miniseries credits as a source only Margaret George’s fat, prodigiously researched, 1997 work, “The Memoirs of Cleopatra: A Novel,” its tone is set early in the opening hour when tarty Cleopatra (Leonor Varela) has herself delivered to Caesar (Timothy Dalton) wrapped in a rug.

Caesar is impressed. So it’s not long before Cleopatra is leaning back in a white tunic on her bed, her sensuous lips parted slightly while receiving Caesar into her arms. He asks: “Who are you, Cleopatra? Are you someone I can trust?” She replies: “I am Egypt, and Egypt is yours . . . for one night only.”

All right!

Author George contradicts other historical accounts that describe Cleopatra as no looker. She’s a sultry, voluptuous dish here, as is her sister, an early rival for the Egyptian throne. As soon as you see them snarling at each other in close proximity, it’s obvious what’s coming.

Tramp fight!

It’s obvious too that despite ABC describing this as being largely about the queen as a skillful politician and forceful leader, “Cleopatra’s” first priority is heavy heat. After Caesar’s murder by members of the Roman Senate, Cleopatra takes up with the married Marc Antony (Billy Zane), whose best line comes as they’re lolling on a beach. “I married for convenience,” he tells her when she pouts about his wife. “Now I live for love.”

“Cleopatra” does turn more somber in Part 2 when the battle gore intensifies, director Franc Roddam does his best work in staging ample gore against a stunning backdrop, and the queen turns out to be a benevolent despot with genuine affection for her people.

All is not lost on the cornball front, though, for she is accompanied everywhere by two muscle-bound black slaves who keep their arms folded like a pair of sconces, and on several occasions she wears a crown that looks like a giant tuning fork. This is no Cleopatsy, moreover, for when Marc Antony squares off against his great Roman rival, Octavian (Rupert Graves), the nimble activist queen takes matters into her own hands by spearing one enemy soldier and using a sword to whack another in his manhood.

Docutrash lives!

And thrives also in ABC’s unauthorized Jesse Ventura film, which arrives simultaneously with the publication of his memoir, “I Ain’t Got Time to Bleed,” described by one reviewer as a “kiss-and-tell-on-himself” book.

Its accounts of the governor’s youthful sexual adventures and underage drinking are not in this whimsically affectionate TV script by Donald Reiker and Patricia Jones, nor is his visit to a Nevada bordello during his days as a Navy SEAL. And filming was completed before he made explosive remarks about last month’s Littleton, Colo., school shootings that he had to immediately retract.

As set out here, Ventura’s life is where the theatrical universes of wrestling and politics intersect. He was born James Janos in south Minneapolis, villainous Jesse “The Body” Ventura becoming the role he assumed on the professional wrestling circuit that he had always hoped to join. Here he is early in the film all starry-eyed at a wrestling match, telling a friend: “Someday these people will be in this very arena booing me.”

It’s this self-mocking tone that makes “The Jesse Ventura Story” likable. Directed by David S. Jackson, the film never takes itself seriously, providing a double dose of Jesse (wide-body Nils Allen Stewart) by deploying him as an on-screen narrator taking part in his own story.

At one point, for example, he stands outside the ring and observes a bulked-up neophyte Jesse learning the ‘rassling ropes from a trainer who hurts his student’s feelings by telling him he has the physical moves to make it but not the showmanship. Jesse: “Whaddaya mean I stink at the sell? Man, I moan, I beg, I plead, I stagger.” The trainer assures him, though, that once he does improve his acting skills, he’ll become a superstar “because people revel in your pain.”

The film also covers Ventura’s marriage, his 1984 retirement from wrestling after suffering a pulmonary embolism (in the hospital, he tenderly holds his own hand), his career as a self-parodying ringside broadcaster, and his entry into politics, his election as a suburban mayor preceding his upset victory as a third-party candidate in the gubernatorial race.

Sticklers for insights shouldn’t bother. Like Ventura himself, this movie is pretty goofy stuff, introducing a man who has no vision for Minnesotans or anyone else beyond “The American dream still rocks!”

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* “Cleopatra” airs Sunday and Monday at 9 p.m. on ABC. “The Jesse Ventura Story” airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on NBC. Both shows have been rated TV-14 (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 14).