Mayday

Sometimes, you've just got to wonder about these movies based on best-selling novels. Let's at least hope that the CBS telepic "Mayday" looked better on the printed page than it does on a television screen, where the execution -- despite a name cast -- proves divertingly dopey.

Here's the premise: A commercial jetliner is accidentally struck by a covert U.S. Navy test missile, which for some reason is testing missiles in the air rather than on the water. It rips two huge holes in the airplane's fuselage, instantly sucking several passengers to their deaths and killing most of the others through asphyxiation. Now it's left to an amateur pilot to land the damaged craft before it kills the few people left alive.