The Backyard Tribe

In this offbeat, zany story, Shulman, a Georgia physician who wrote and produced the film Doc Hollywood , draws on his own experience with Heart to Heart, a program he helped found to provide cardiac surgery in the U.S. for Third-World children. Multicultural understanding doesn't come easy to Bud Payne, an Atlanta doctor, when a Maasai girl from Kenya arrives for emergency heart surgery--accompanied by her entire tribe, who camp out in mud huts in the altruistic doctor's suburban backyard. Shulman's story works best when it plays off the incongruities and misunderstandings resulting from a clash between cultures: in Kenya, TV kiddie-show host Zach Tyler attempts to set up a ``global village'' but finds that the Maasai are more interested in using the video equipment and satellite hookup to watch Hitchcock's Psycho and broadcast their own slasher film. Once in Atlanta, a Maasai tribal healer puts a sexual hex on a hospital administrator and tribe members rustle a Georgia farmer's dairy cows, since ``God gave them all the cows on earth.'' But then, Westerners ``don't have all the answers either,'' as Dr. Payne ultimately learns in this sporadically moving tale. (Mar.)