‘Crosstown’ Gives Lesson in Diversity

“Crosstown,” today’s ho-hum “CBS Schoolbreak Special,” is doubly disappointing. Not only is it the last film in the network’s long-running but just-canceled after-school series for teen audiences, but it also falls far short of the series’ December offering, the wrenchingly effective and finely crafted “Children Remember the Holocaust.”

To be fair, the exceptional December show was something of an anomaly, a documentary in what has been an issue-oriented drama series that generally fulfilled its educational entertainment mission with respectable quality, if not depth.

“Crosstown”--written by Kathryn Makris from her novel about a popular, well-to-do white teenage girl whose mother’s financial reverses force the family to move to a poor, racially mixed part of town--is a faint swan song, one that no doubt plays better on the page than on the screen.

Trouble starts when Mom (Jennifer Hetrick) wants to be independent of her ex-husband, and the resulting quarrel leads Dad to stop child support and Mom and the kids to lose their big, fancy suburban house.

Seventeen-year-old April (Kimberly McCullough of “General Hospital”) and her friends are appalled when she has to relocate to downscale “downtown.”

Despite an apartment manager’s portentous warning that “it don’t take much to lose what you got,” there’s little sense that April’s situation is anything more than an excuse for the obvious lesson that diversity is nothing to fear.

Her hardships barely register as she adapts to urban life, makes friends and attracts the interest of the coolest guy in school.

Most regrettable is the underuse of Roscoe Lee Browne as an inspirational speech-and-drama teacher.

* “Crosstown” airs at 3 p.m. today on CBS (Channel 2).