TV REVIEWS : ‘Miss America’ Doesn’t Add Up to a Movie

Carolyn Sapp, the 1992 Miss America who was seen Saturday night crowning her successor on NBC’s Miss America Pageant, is back on television again at 9 tonight in “Miss America: Behind the Crown” (Channels 4, 36 and 39), a turgid, autobiographical movie about her tormented relationship with her abusive ex-boyfriend. Is NBC on top of things, or what?

Granted, Sapp is not exactly a household word, let alone an actress, but when you combine a Miss America with an assault and battery story, you’ve got a movie, right? Wrong.

It’s rather dumbfounding to see the credit roll: Introducing Carolyn Sapp as Herself .

What has happened to the network TV movie that it is starring non-pros? Talk about a break for Sapp. You can’t say she doesn’t look right for the role, but her features are so frozen and inexpressive--so Miss America, in other words--that the story’s focus quickly shifts to her violent lover and short-term fiancee.

Fortunately, the character of Nuu Faaola--a football star who made headlines with Sapp after the beauty queen went public with her story last year--is in the capable hands of Ray Bumatai, who runs away with the movie. Alternately sweet and simmering, he’s genuinely scary.

Karol Ann Hoeffner’s script is uneventful and plodding for the first 45 minutes, finally picking up steam when her boyfriend smashes his fist into a kitchen table, a portent of the battering that Sapp is in for.

Since many women--and men--will identify with this story, it’s too bad they couldn’t have gotten an actress. This is not a question of dumping on Sapp--who can blame her for grabbing a brass ring?--but you wonder at the task faced by director Richard Michaels (who helmed “Leona Helmsley: The Queen of Mean”--who could have played herself, too, if she hadn’t been in jail).