BACK TO THE BEACH
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1987 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Nostalgic but uneven comedy brings
Frankie and Annette back to the beach they used to party on.
Some of the ideas work; some don't. Overall, nothing
special.
Twenty-five to twenty years ago, American International Pictures had targeted a teen-age audience and was churning out cheap films for a ready market. Their main staples were quickly-thrown-together horror films and their "Beach Party" series. That series included BEACH PARTY (1963), MUSCLE BEACH PARTY (1964), BIKINI BEACH (1964), PAJAMA PARTY (1964), BEACH BLANKET BINGO (1965), HOW TO STUFF A WILD BIKINI (1965), and GHOST IN THE INVISIBLE BIKINI (1966). Annette Funicello starred in the first six and Frankie Avalon in the first five. (Only Harvey Lembeck as Eric Von Zipper was in all seven.) Inspired, perhaps, by the trend to take 50s and 60s TV programs and do 80s sequels, Paramount is this year telling the story of what happened after Annette and Frankie grew up and got married. They are a generation older and returning to the haunts of their youth.
Today, Annette is a perky peanut-butter pusher and Frankie owns a Ford dealership in Ohio. They take their would-be punk son to visit their daughter on the old beach in California. Their daughter (played by Lori Loughlin, who seems to be the only one in the film who knows how to act) is shacking up with a fiance about whom she has not told her parents, and Frankie reacts just like any of the fathers in the old series. Also along for the ride is Connie Stevens as Annette's "bad girl" rival in the earlier films. This is something of a trick on the audience, of course. Connie Stevens never appeared in the original series.
BACK TO THE BEACH is enjoyable for about half an hour. Then the premise starts wearing thin and the comedy gets very uneven. The producers have assembled a dozen or so TV characters from the 50s and 60s plus a somewhat out-of-place Pee-Wee Herman. The best line of the film, delivered by an aging Bob Denver, is a wry comment on the logic of GILLIGAN'S ISLAND. On the whole, BACK TO THE BEACH is better than might have been expected, but it is still only a high 0 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
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