A Ranch That Reins In Tough Teens

Ajittery hand-held camera moves through the shadowy alley, then closes in on a clutch of rough young men negotiating a drug deal. The deal goes bad. A fight breaks out and the police rush in. And Keith Frazier (played by Brian Gross) lands in jail.

This is not your average Animal Planet family fare, but tonight the channel goes gritty long enough to set up the premise of a new movie, “Hope Ranch” (8 p.m.).

Bruce Boxleitner stars as a former police officer and rancher, J.T. Hope, doing conscience duty--taking on Keith and two other three-time juvenile losers, Ernesto and Booker (J.D. Pardo and Richard Lee Jackson), who are facing incarceration as adult offenders. Hope has a unique antidote for bad habits and bad attitudes: a 2,000-acre ranch run by two ranch hands: wisecracking Shorty, delightfully played by Barry Corbin (“Northern Exposure”), and gruff tough-guy Colt, played by Lorenzo Lamas (“Renegade”).

When the three delinquents are forced to trade a jail bunk for a bunkhouse, they pout and balk. But when they’re made to don western wear, work 12-hour days and toe the line according to major domo Shorty, they rebel, only to be knocked back in line by Colt.

This being Animal Planet, the teens have to dodge “cow pies,” muck out the barn, grapple with calves, try to stay in the saddle, face lizards, rats and one nasty rattler, all while nursing an assortment of bruises, cuts and painful blisters.

“Hope Ranch” is a classic fish-out-of-water tale, a juvenile “City Slickers” meets “Scared Straight,” replete with city-versus-country one-liners. Colt: “There are only two kinds of music: country and western.” Booker shoots back: “Where I come from, there are only two kinds of music: hip and hop.”

The jokes and tenderfoot mishaps played out against the great outdoors carry along the entertaining, if predictable, story, although the idea that these hard cases could be redeemed in two weeks requires considerable artifice and contrivance.