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"Small" is the best possible one-word description of this under-the-radar comedy-drama that drifts along on a gentle breeze of good-natured humor and benefits greatly from a tight script and an understated performance by Tom Conti. A Pope suffering from the isolation of a king or corporate CEO pining to get back in touch with "the people" is a captivating concept and screenwriters David S. Ward and Richard Kramer, adapting a book by Celia Gittelson, make the most of it in the first and third acts. It's in the middle portions, where the pontiff is masquerading as a humble small-town priest, that the story could have, and in many hands would have, fallen apart, but it doesn't, instead finding a centerpiece in a public works project that focuses the characters' energies and ambitions. Not in any sense a success at the box office, Saving Grace (1986) is a first class charmer that deserves a second life on cable TV and video.