Robin (Valerie Bertinelli) is a popular girl in the California high school where she studies. She has not already had any sexual experience yet, on the contrary that her best friends and most of the rest of fellow students. But when Derek (Timothy Hutton), a new student arrives in town she feels highly attracted to him as well as he feels for her. He is not the usual kind of boy she is used to: he is honest, polite and conservative while she is determined and daring. They begin to date but the fact that they come from very different family values makes it somehow difficult: Robin's father left when she was a child and her mother (Fionnula Flanagan) felt so overwhelmed that she decided to avoid this could happen to her daughter by having an open-minded relationship, talking about sex freely, etc. Her partner is reluctant to get married due to an also unsuccessful previous marriage and she feels insecure and rejected because of this. So when Robin realizes she is having a crush on Derek she thinks about having sex with him. Following her mother advise, she asks her gynecologist about contraception methods available only to find out that Derek -whose parents died and is living with his sister's family- is not so sure about having sex so soon due to his' moral values. After feeling rejected she decides to look for a past boyfriend to have sex with but at the last minute she can not go on: after all maybe is not sex what Robin is seeking for but love and while her mother is messy with her own partner relationship, Robin finds out about love.
In the 70's and 80's a lot of family tv movies were made about family problems (divorces, drug addiction, health problems, death, etc). They described nowadays problems and how different family members dealt with them.
Yong love, first love is one of these movies about teenager coming to age (sex awakening) but this time it has a newly different approach: here is the girl who is looking for sex and the boy who is reluctant due to his moral values. Performances are nice and it is clear that the film was made to promote miss Bertinelly actin skills, since she has the biggest (and best) role. Good enough for its modest premise, film always moves in a "comfortable" zone, fair for a family audience. Lacks some better improvement of Robin's mother, especially considering they had miss Flanagan for the role, who could have given a most interesting performance with a better script. And also a bit slow going but in the end it is an interesting and agreeable movie.