Despite Music, ‘South Pacific’ Drifts Out to Sea

There’s no keeping down that famous Rodgers & Hammerstein musical about love breaking out on a tropical island where U.S. forces are stationed during World War II. The tunes are much too grand.

Yet ABC’s new rendition of “South Pacific” is often no enchanted evening.

Stage shows haven’t often transferred well or even interestingly to filmdom, “Hair” and “Jesus Christ Superstar” being a pair of exceptions. “South Pacific” isn’t one, a 1958 movie version, with Josh Logan moving behind the camera after directing the show on Broadway, coming up short.

Also unevenly successful is this new “South Pacific,” directed by Richard Pearce and filmed in Australia and Tahiti. This part of the magic works, immediately transporting you back to that time, and to that place despite the screen’s small scale.

James Michener’s book of vignettes, “Tales of the South Pacific,” is the inspiration here. Even with the Japanese enemy looming dangerously just beyond, gentle sea breezes blow in romance. And despite the war, there’s something idyllic about this lush setting where, early in the show, a chorus of female-starved Navy grunges sing “There Is Nothin’ Like a Dame” with foot-stomping humor and snap.

The story’s dame of dames is Navy nurse Nellie Forbush (Glenn Close). It has her falling for widowed French plantation owner Emile De Becque (Rade Sherbedgia), and Marine Lt. Joseph Cable (Harry Connick Jr.) getting stuck on a local native girl named Liat (Natalie Mendoza) when arriving to undertake a special mission. Her mother, the shrewd Tonkinese trader Bloody Mary (Lori Tan), presses him to marry her. Also prominent is Luther Billis (Robert Pastorelli), a fast-talking huckster of a seaman.

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Although the voices are generally thin, Close is a fine Nellie, at her best when washing Emile “right outta my hair” in a signature sequence that retains its boisterous fun. Although Connick doesn’t add much, and the ruggedly urbane but muted Sherbedgia seems at times to be sleepwalking, Tan and Pastorelli are dynamic. And from “Bloody Mary” to “Younger Than Springtime,” the music is, well, the music, timeless and transcendent.

Although the “South Pacific” of Lawrence D. Cohen’s teleplay deals with the bigotry of Cable and Nellie, that racial theme is not integrated seamlessly, and the swiftness of Nellie’s redemption seems almost miraculous.

Two-thirds into the three-hour telecast, meanwhile, “South Pacific” begins wandering as if lost in the jungle, ceasing to be a musical and instead becoming a tuneless, unrewarding war movie, as if Rodgers & Hammerstein were known for battle scenes instead of plays with indelible melodies and lyrics.

* “South Pacific” airs tonight at 8 on ABC. The network has rated it TV-PG-LSV (may be unsuitable for young children, with special advisories for coarse language, sexual situations and violence).