TV REVIEWS : SURPRISE!--IT’S A ‘LIBERTY’ PARTY DAY

The phrase about the United States being “a nation of immigrants” has become trite through repetition this week, but its continuing truth is freshly documented in an engaging film by Louis Malle that gets its first airing on Home Box Office tonight.

Meanwhile, trivial is the word for “My Friend Liberty,” another TV special tonight dealing with the Statue of Liberty.

Malle, the French director of such films as “Murmur of the Heart,” “Atlantic City” and “My Dinner With Andre,” spent three months traveling the United States to make “And the Pursuit of Happiness,” an 80-minute documentary about the incredible diversity of immigrants spread throughout the nation.

The program, part of HBO’s “American Undercover” series, will be shown on the cable channel at 8 tonight, with additional play dates this month on Wednesday, July 12, 15, 18 and 21.

The images Malle captured are striking: In a classroom in Queens, N.Y., students representing 17 nationalities study American history from a Filipino teacher. In Bridgeport, Neb., a doctor born in Vietnam treats a patient born in Greece. In San Jose, a family from India worships at the small Hindu temple they’ve built in the barbecue pit of their suburban kitchen. In Orange County, English-speaking children of Vietnamese refugees go to school to study Vietnamese, in part so they can communicate with their parents.

Along the way Malle solicited comments, both positive and negative, about life in the United States, but this is less a series of interviews than an impressionistic mosaic, full of paradoxes and contradictions yet alive with people from around the world pursuing, with varying degrees of success, their dreams.

The reminder that they have come here to do so, and that--the very real difficulties they encounter notwithstanding--so many of them have been given the opportunity to do so, makes “And the Pursuit of Happiness” a most appropriate offering for this Liberty Weekend.

Not so “My Friend Liberty,” a half-hour children’s special airing at 7:30 p.m. on KCBS Channel 2.

Featuring clay animation by Jimmy Picker, the program tells the light-hearted story of a boy who falls asleep during his teacher’s boring lecture about the Statue of Liberty and dreams that it comes to life to tell him that “if you take advantage of what America has to offer, you can achieve anything.”

But Picker and his collaborating writer-producers, Mimi Mervis and Jeffrey Sass, venture far afield to incorporate a previously produced and unrelated piece, “Sundae in New York,” which won an Academy Award for short films, and a break-dancing sequence. Worst of all, though, is a segment in which a small green creature from outer space croons the Penguins’ “Earth Angel” as it woos Lady Liberty in a Tunnel of Love and a parked convertible.

In its own tacky way, though, this harmlessly intentioned but ill-conceived program tells us something about liberty too--that we are free to use a national symbol in the pursuit of commercial entertainment.

Here is a rundown on other “Liberty” coverage on TV today:

ABC and NBC take to the air at 6 a.m. for four hours of live coverage of the International Naval Review and the parade of tall ships through New York Harbor. CBS’ coverage begins at 8 a.m.

The Cable News Network also will begin coverage at 6 a.m. and plans to stay with it until 1 p.m.

“The Statue of Liberty,” Ken Burns’ excellent documentary about the history of Lady Liberty and its relevance to the United States today, will be repeated at 1 p.m. on KCET Channel 28.

Also being repeated on Channel 28 at 2:30 p.m. is “Dreams of Distant Shores,” a documentary about the experiences of early immigrants to this country.

At 8 p.m., ABC begins a three-hour telecast covering a performance of American music by the Boston Pops Orchestra, the largest fireworks display in U.S. history and an examination of the meaning of liberty, with Sam Waterston reading works by Thoreau.

That ABC broadcast will be seen on a tape-delayed basis here on the West Coast. CNN plans to provide live coverage of the fireworks show from 6 to 7 p.m. The cable channel also has scheduled a half-hour wrap-up on the day’s events at 8 p.m.

The Public Broadcasting Service also gets into the act tonight with an Independence Day concert from the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol, featuring Henry Mancini, Sarah Vaughan, pianist Andre-Michel Schub and the National Symphony Orchestra. The broadcast will be seen at 8 p.m. on Channel 24, at 8:30 p.m. on Channel 50 and at 9 p.m. on Channels 28 and 15.