“And the Beat Goes On: The Sonny and Cher Story” Tonight at 9 on WABC/Ch.7
“THE Sonny and Cher Story” is for rabid fans and retro fashion freaks only.
To anyone else, this kitschy and too-cute TV movie will feel as if it lasts at least twice as long as their shared moment in the spotlight.
Or the alleged nationwide search for Sonny’s and Cher’s stand-ins.
The only way to watch it is with one eye shut and one ear covered.
Otherwise, the sound-alike songs don’t sound enough like the real thing that made Sonny and Cher a bubblegum phenomenon; and the lookalikes look, uh, like producer Larry A. Thompson couldn’t afford a Canal Street facsimile.
Jay Underwood (“The Boy Who Could Fly”) has the nose but not the nerdiness to play Sonny. Too often it sounds as if he’s gotten a half-lungful of helium.
Renee Faia (a costume assistant turned actress) looks like Cher until she moves. Then she looks like Patti Lupone playing Morticia. She dances like Pinocchio and belts every line as if she were stoked on testosterone.
Don’t get us started on the other look-not-at-all alikes from a cherubic Little Richard to David Letterman, whose show brought Sonny and Cher back together 14 years after they split.
Perhaps we shouldn’t expect depth from a polyester version of Bono’s book about the life and good times of a couple that built a career out of songs written by a man who knew only three chords on the piano but who didn’t let that stop him.
It certainly didn’t help that this “Story” was shot on a budget that apparently allowed only one take because Thompson had to keep a lead foot on the production while keeping Bono’s widow Mary (listed as co-executive producer) placated.
But in an era of tell-all journalism and bare-all autobiographies, “The Sonny and Cher Story” might as well have been cast with Las Vegas Ken and Barbie and written by Mattel or a drag-show impresario who saw too many “Gidget” movies when he was young and impressionable.
There is just no humanity there.
The duds, from Sonny’s fur vest to Cher’s navel-bearing gowns, can send the audience packing for a time trip, but the reverie screeches to a halt everytime a meant-to-be-real person steps onto the sets (including the Bel-Air mansion Sonny and Cher bought with their earnings from “I Got You Babe” and then couldn’t afford to furnish).
The dramatized portion ends abruptly with Sonny signing off of the CBS variety show he and Cher (and daughter Chastity) were doing when she claimed “involuntary servitude” as grounds for divorce.
We see Congressman Sonny with Newt Gingrich and see news footage from the funeral after he was killed in a 1998 skiing accident and hear Cher’s teary eulogy.
We’d love to hear Cher’s reaction to “The Beat Goes On.” Do we hear a stifled yawn?