Wil Horneff

Wil Horneff saves the teen traumas for his film and TV work. Like many of his peers, the New Jersey high-school freshman skateboards, swims, Rollerblades and does his homework. He also just happens to have teen-dream good looks. While his friends let off steam in competitive sports, Horneff has parlayed any teen Angst he might have into acting. "My problems are nothing compared to the kids I've played," Horneff says from his Saddle Ridge, N.J., home.

Wil Horneff saves the teen traumas for his film and TV work. Like many of his peers, the New Jersey high-school freshman skateboards, swims, Rollerblades and does his homework. He also just happens to have teen-dream good looks. While his friends let off steam in competitive sports, Horneff has parlayed any teen Angst he might have into acting. "My problems are nothing compared to the kids I've played," Horneff says from his Saddle Ridge, N.J., home.

It's a shame that the makers of "Born to Be Wild" went to such great lengths to create an absolutely convincing gorilla via technical wizardry only to waste their efforts on such a trite, predictable comedy-adventure. Both Katie the Gorilla--the creation of special animatronics effects expert Tony Gardner--and young Wil Horneff, who are the film's endearing stars, and its serious animal-rights theme, deserve much better.

"Ghost in the Machine" (general release) deftly envisions a dead serial killer living on as a computer virus. As a technological thriller, this 20th Century Fox release has superior special effects, maintains a clear story line through a thicket of computer mumbo-jumbo, but its machinery tends to be more interesting than its people. To her credit, director Rachel Talaly pulls everything together sharply and briskly.

CBS' remake of the beloved 1946 Oscar-winning movie "The Yearling" is ample evidence of the lingering lure of the agrarian myth and the myth of the rural family in the American imagination. Everything about this production--its primitive, addictive environment, its uncomplicated characters, its wild animal kingdom--harks to a past that is not so much romantic as it is isolated, lonely and, not least, wondrous.

If you're not too water-logged by now you may want to check the acclaimed 1979 TV movie SOS Titanic (TBS Sunday at 6 and 11 p.m. ), praised for blending the dramatic elements of the 1953 "Titanic" and the documentary aspects of the 1958 "A Night to Remember." David Janssen and Cloris Leachman star. Born to Be Wild (ABC Sunday at 7 p.m.) combines an absolutely convincing gorilla via technical wizardry with a trite, predictable comedy-adventure.

The 1961 comedy The Parent Trap (TBS, Sunday at 7:35 a.m.) finds Hayley Mills trying to match up Maureen O'Hara with Brian Keith. Hayley plays twins, separated at birth, who meet after their divorced parents send them to the same summer camp. Thereafter the girls are consumed with trying to reunite their parents. For ages 5 and up. **** Muppets Tonight, on hiatus since March, returns this week (ABC, Sunday at 7 p.m.

John Guare is very brave. Imagine mixing one's metaphors and doing it by putting three adults and nine--count 'em, nine--kids on stage. Imagine invoking the gods of wrath, music, Sicily and humor in one off-the-wall swoop. Imagine creating a comedy that turns to parable and tragedy, all of it in roughly 90 engaging minutes. Engaging as opposed to absorbing. That's what Guare has done in a bit of whimsy with the improbable title "Four Baboons Adoring the Sun."

"The Roost," writer-director Ti West's homage to low-budget '70s horror movies, places a premium on tension while taking a fresh bite out of the old vampire-bat tale. Full of genuine scares and impressively disturbing effects, the film follows the travails of a quartet of young people stranded on a stormy Halloween night in the Pennsylvania countryside who discover that traffic might not be such a bad thing.

Most producers would be too intimidated to remake classic movies for TV. Not Robert Halmi Sr. In the past year his RHI Productions has reincarnated "Gypsy" and "Call of the Wild." And he's currently in production on 'Scarlett," the eight-hour CBS miniseries based on the sequel to one of the most beloved films ever made, "Gone With the Wind." "I'm very arrogant," he states matter-of-factly. "I think I can do better. It doesn't deter me that a picture was done whenever and by whom.