TV Reviews : ‘First Time’: Promising Premise Gone Awry

Jewish greasers in Austin, Tex., circa 1960, lusting after forbidden chiffon-clad Catholic girls. . . . The mind boggles at the cross-ethnic possibilities.

But the potential for either wit or a genuine exploration of ethnic class consciousness is glossed over in the TV movie “For the Very First Time” (tonight at 9 on Channels 4, 36 and 39). Its teen lovers are surely star-crossed, and the film itself is a bit of a cross between “American Graffiti” and one of Neil Simon’s more innocuous remembrances. But it’s viewers’ eyes that’ll be crossing as they struggle through this dreadfully benign execution of a promising premise.

The early ‘60s have been so overdone as the milieu of nostalgia-drenched, pop-scored teen-pics that it’s understandable director Michael Zinberg and writer Karen Clark would want to introduce this wrinkle. Rather than illuminate a social reality, the religious demarcation serves only as a writerly device to put the kids on opposite sides of the tracks, even as they live next door to one another.

Corin (Corky) Nemec is OK as the narrating protagonist but, as the willowy shiksa dream girl, Cheryl Pollak (“The Marla Hanson Story”) has been miscast as an innocent, ditzy seductress.

As the boy and his pals head off to a Mexican whorehouse for some stereotypical encounters, the picture begins to resemble the unfunny slate of virginity-losing teen-pics from a decade ago. Despite its crassness, this movie wants to be sweet almost as badly as its teen romantics want a world without parents and organized religion. Neither it nor they get their wish.