'Water Is Wide' is beautiful to look at but lacks depth
''The Water Is Wide" is awfully pretty. Set on an island off the coast of South Carolina, this new Hallmark Hall of Fame production will have you pondering your next sunny vacation. It's a travel pamphlet-in-motion of a South Carolina paradise, with long, languorous views of strafed clouds reflecting on flat liquid surfaces.
But if you step into this dazzling picture, what you'll find is that the CBS movie is too shallow. ''The Water Is Wide," tomorrow night at 9 on Channel 4, is only ankle-deep as it offers up pretty solutions to ugly economic, cultural, and racial problems. It's the kind of Hallmark product that's somehow inspiring and literary until you realize you've been temporarily hijacked by naiveté -- until you put the greeting card down.
About a white teacher educating an island of poor blacks in the 1960s, ''Water" may seem familiar. Partly that's because the same autobiographical novel by Pat Conroy was adapted in 1974 as ''Conrack," starring Jon Voight. But more likely it's because the script, by Jonathan Estrin, relies heavily on an already overused movie formula. It has been written in the manner of every feel-good teacher-hero story from ''To Sir, With Love" to ''Dead Poets Society." By the time the kids have been changed overnight and are cheering for ''teacher man" Conroy (Jeff Hephner) and attending his wedding, you know we have all been here before -- and before that, too.
The idealistic Conroy moves to the island of Yamacraw (based on Daufuskie Island) to teach, but he falls in love with the people. It's the height of the '60s, and he has great hopes of changing the world. The kids in his class are so under-educated, they literally don't know what country they live in. But they have high spirits and, it turns out, spectacular voices. In one scene, Conroy catches them goofing around with an amplification system, and he sees their wryness and their joy at play. He works hard to find their will to learn, and then cultivates it.
Conroy's only colleague at the schoolhouse is a stiff black woman named Mrs. Brown (Alfre Woodard), who beats the students with a yardstick. ''Don't act your color," she yells at them. ''They understand whipping," she explains to Conroy. She makes the students feel badly about themselves, while Conroy tries to boost their confidence with praise. He also makes learning fun, with slide shows, Beethoven, and a field trip to Washington, D.C. She stews with resentment toward him and his growing popularity.
Mrs. Brown isn't the only obstacle to Conroy and his mission. The superintendent has sent him to Yamacraw with the understanding that he won't make waves. But as the son of a rigid Marine, he has developed a strong resistance to authority. And so he single-handedly goes up against the status quo, to fight for these people's freedom.
Yes, as in so many movies about American civil rights, Conroy is a great white savior. The movie has an unappealing undercurrent, as one more white guy is seen liberating a population of indistinct but adorable blacks, including a teacher who is more oppressive than any of the whites.
Hephner is likable as Conroy, but the script makes him too good to be true. He never has moments of doubt or anger, just a dull, straight-ahead drive to fix. But Woodard is the real lost opportunity. She seems only half-heartedly committed to her character, overly softening what are despicable qualities. Her quiet manner should make Mrs. Brown's violence more appalling, instead it makes it only half believable.
Mrs. Brown should be more tormented, as a force of self-oppression in the face of a white power structure. Instead, she's just a lonely misguided lady. Like so much of ''Water," she'd be more interesting if her point of view were a little murkier.
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com.
