TV Reviews : ‘Pink Lightning’ Fueled by Girls in Convertible

Five girls who could hardly be more different from one another tooling around in a pink convertible in the early 1960s, doing some heavy female bonding in the last days before one of them is to marry. . . . That was the premise of “Shag,” a charming and little-seen comedy of a few years back, and it also happens to describe the plot driving “Pink Lightning,” a less entertaining made-for-TV comedy-drama from Fox (tonight at 8 on Channel 11).

The way the two movies work themselves out is substantially different, so “Pink Lightning” writer-director Carol Monpere can’t be accused of plagiarism--and a small rash of female coming-of-age films is nothing to sneeze at, given the previous gender deck-stacking.

Still, it’s indicative of a paucity of imagination, if nothing else, that filmmakers seem to believe those precipitous Kennedy years were the only time anybody ever lost their innocence.

Initial indications to the contrary, “Pink” doesn’t divide the weight equally among its five college-age gal pals, but focuses on two: Tookie (Sarah Buxton), a spunky but virginal plain-Jane about to tie the knot with a lunkheaded hunk, and Jill (Martha Byrne), who, as Tookie’s more worldly best friend, also happens to be having an affair with her fiance.

In its best moments, the movie floats on the charisma of Buxton, who alternates nicely and entirely credibly between cheerful and tearful, and Byrne, a beauty who seems cynical before her time, like Julianne Phillips with a bit more character in her face and her lines.

Monpere directs with special sensitivity to young women’s emotions, but even the more nicely detailed scenes are inevitably followed by cloying attempts at comedy. Steve Tyrell’s rockish score, much of which sounds anachronistically right out of the mid-’70s, is an added drawback.