Where the Boys Are
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Movie Reviews of Where the Boys Are
Movie Review: Double Standards Bedevil Coeds in Groundbreaking Spring Break Flick
Summary: 3 Stars
Forty-five years have elapsed since its original release, but it is amazing how this 1960 film introduced a particular genre that continues to be produced today granted in a far more explicit manner - the spring-break, beach-party movie where attractive teens go through a sun-drenched mating ritual and somehow love triumphs over carnal knowledge. Back then, the concept didn't seem quite as jaded as it does now, and consequently there is an entertaining naiveté about the timeworn story of four co-eds from a snowy Midwestern college who journey to Ft. Lauderdale for spring break to meet boys.
The plot is based on the then-accepted notion that girls in college are only marking time waiting for husbands to come along, but the journey to that goal depends on the girl. The four in question are Merritt, a smart blonde who is not living up to her academic potential as she questions the moral code around premarital sex; Melanie, so deeply insecure she mistakes sex for love with a less-than-honorable Ivy Leaguer; Tuggle, a tall brunette who zeroes in on an even taller, eccentric hitchhiker; and Angie, the supposedly plain one who gets used to being ignored by men.
Directed in a perfunctory fashion by Henry Levin, this is not the type of movie where you are terribly impressed with the performances, but I have to say the acting is certainly miles above subsequent beach-party movies. Elvis' former leading lady Dolores Hart plays Merritt credibly even as she is being seduced by a youthful George Hamilton wanly playing Ryder, a well-to-do Ivy Leaguer with a conveniently located yacht. As the most troubled of the girls, Yvette Mimieux (always loved her name) accurately captures the constantly forlorn, little-girl-lost state of Melanie, a teenaged Blanche du Bois in the making.
So pert and charming as Angie, Connie Francis actually seems miscast as a plain-Jane, especially when she sings "Turn on the Sunshine" with a stage polish completely out of character. The standout is Paula Prentiss who portrays Tuggle with her unique personality in full bloom and partnered the first of several times with Jim Hutton as the comically obnoxious TV. She is an underappreciated comedienne with a loopy charm and vibrantly twangy voice all her own - it's a shame her career never really took off the way it deserved to.
I think the film does make a valid, sometimes even perceptive attempt to address the confusion that Eisenhower-era girls had over sex and love. Girls were expected to function under a double-standard where the only way to attract boys was to have something to offer but at the price of their reputations. This point is hammered home when the tone shifts in the last portion to melodrama. At the same time, the film is filled with predictable comic scenes, including a contrived melee in an underwater tank with the zaftig and nasal Barbara Nichols as Esther Williams-wannabe Lola Fandango.
Prentiss offers her services and remembrances to the alternate audio commentary track on the DVD, which also comes with a looking-back featurette which includes interviews with Prentiss and Francis. Who knew this film would launch a hundred imitations? The minute you hear Francis sing the title tune, it is hard for a baby boomer not to get nostalgic. If you have an interest in understanding the mid-century moral code enforced upon the youth of America, especially girls, I can think of worse films to see.
Movie Review: Connie's tour de force
Summary: 3 Stars
The best beach flick of the 60's. Since watching this movie all of the starring women - Paula Prentiss, Dolores Hart, Yvette Mimieux - have come on my underrated actors list, all before I realize the connection. I also became a fan of Connie Francis, something I thought would never happen. A year later I admitted to owning over 10 records of her to my older sister. She told me to keep that to myself. It more or less is Connie's movie but Paula almost steals it. (This was her debut too! She already had a presence.) Jim Hutton (Paula's boy in the movie) and her have great chemistry together. Apparently they went on to make other movies together which I shall see. The plot, what there is, four girls go to the beach where they all meet boys, but Yvette's ends in disaster. The movie also has the most sexist quote ever. It's on imdb but I won't quote it here because I don't want to give it away. Connie also did another movie with some of the cast here called Looking for Love. Someone please put it on video.Movie Review: fun movie
Summary: 3 Stars
Typical movie - fun, surf, very reminscent of it's genre. Not bad for a rainy Sunday viewing.
If you view the 1980's version...it's hard to believe that each era's interpretation can change so drastically, but still have the similar plotlines. The 1980's version of the movie is funnier.
Movie Review: Sex, Sleaze and Sin in the Florida Sun
Summary: 2 Stars
In "Where The Boys Are", Hollywood Babylon strikes at the core of everlasting, unchanging values in a sleazy cornucopia of lust, lies, covetousness, sex and other sins.Back in '60 when this flimsy film first played in a theatre near you, the Hollywood elite just as before, and just as now, corrupted the moral atmosphere by pushing abnormal, immoral themes as somehow "normal". Catch the original preview reel if you can, notice the blatantly trumped-up excitement, the false drama and so on. By putting Connie Francis in the lineup with that syrupy serenade title song, Hollywood knew they'd get extra bang for their buck from the pop music crowd as a result of "free" advertising every time the song was played on radios, jukeboxes and so on.
With one-dimensional characters and an equally thin story line, Where The Boys Are ostensibly displays four "girls" looking for "boys" while on Easter Break, vacationing in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. (Remember Easter, the day to commemorate the resurrection of Christ, cf. First Corinthians 15:1-4? In politically-correct, morally-incorrect times, the name was changed to "Spring Break" and other variations; ever wonder why "powers and principalities" have always tried to force God out of the picture since the Garden of Eden?)
I say ostensibly because the behind-the-scenes premise to the whole story seems to be an under-riding theme of abandoning the true standards of the day (and of eternity) and bringing out the worst in people in terms of their inner fears and desires apart from sound ethics. For the girls, the theme seems to be "Get married at any cost!" Lie, cheat, whatever. Play up to the guy, coo, flutter your eyelashes, fall all over him, beg for compliments. Look at every male within visual range and consider him a prospect for matrimony. Do whatever it takes to get a proposal within the first millisecond of meeting him, to paraphrase.
For the boys, the theme seems to be: "Get drunk, lie, have sex without commitment". It's interesting to note with 20/20 hindsight how these themes played themselves out on the larger screen of our U.S. culture throughout the 1960s, especially in view of the so-called sexual revolution, the abandonment of traditional values, the ever-increasing divorce rate, broken homes, abandoned latch-key children, forty-million abortions, the radical feminist movement of the early '70s, and on to today where we have almost complete chaos in our society, high crime, higher racism, and male/female role reversal. Now, women are out looking for "hotties" to have sex with, complete with AIDs and all the other STDs.
Ah, I digress. Back to the story. What we have here are four love stories, four little vignettes parlayed into a movie with Easter Break in Florida as a backdrop. In addition to physically being on vacation, the morals of the characters are evidently on vacation as well, a convenience brought about through the craft of script writing. What's the point of this film? Girl Number One is a Princess Grace of Monaco look alike, prim and proper, hailing from a "metropolis of 11,000" with her intelligence quotient for the movie (138), adamant about holding on to whatever chastity she has by playing along with a rich playboy, portrayed by George Hamilton. His character of course has a slight edge from a secular humanist viewpoint: he's got the yacht, the wealthy family background, and, oh, what the heck, let's throw in an I.Q. of 140 just to make the cherchez le femme interesting. Girl Number One decides to keep his sexual advances at bay but realizes this is a good catch because he's rich. How's that for shoddy values, ladies, marry the alcoholic womanizer for his money! This guy has Ted Kennedy written all over him, with lines like, "I usually tell women that I love them, but I've never told them that I like them, except for you, you're the first one I've ever really liked." Of course, since the focus is not on spiritual matters of truth and propriety but only on materialism, go for all the gusto you can and marry the millionaire, right!?! Girl Number One decides to pursue her boy later, after vacation ends and they return to the cold and snowy northland.
Girl Number Two is our dear Miss Francis. The script has her talking and acting like she's a "dog", some ugly mutt (who let the dogs out, woof, woof-woof-woof!). But folks, I have to tell you, Connie Francis has always been one of the most attractive females on the planet, so you just have to play along in your mind with this idea that she's ugly and therefore, no boys look at her, much less ask her out or propose to her. As luck would have it, she spies a goofy jazz bandleader, played by the much older Frank Gorshin (yes, that's right, The Riddler from the old Batman t.v. series). She engages in a pursuit of the musician who never praises her (like that night when she put on her green dress and green shoes) and somehow ingratiates herself to him when his coke-bottle thick glasses are broken and she is useful as his seeing-eye "dog", woof-woof. Somehow, she even sings a number with the band, I wonder how that happened.
Girl Number Three is Paula Prentiss, who went on to acting fame in other movies and of course in t.v. Her modus operandi is that she is a tall, geeky girl who would be even more hard-pressed to get a date/husband than Francis, except that Prentiss has "landed" the drunken Jim Hutton as her beau. So, while Prentiss counts herself lucky, Hutton consistently stays falling-down drunk. Gee, girls, every woman's dream, right. The movie builds to a climax when the main characters are all in a nightclub and Hutton goes lusting after an underwater dancer that the clubbers see through the glass sides of her tank. Of course, they all "somehow" end up in the tank, and then are taken to jail. Luckily, the high-pitched, squeaky-voiced Marilyn Monroe-based underwater dancer helps convince the local gendarmes that it was all a mistake, and the next thing you know she's out of her swimming suit and wearing a tight-fitting purple dress, singing and dancing on the beach while Hutton lusts on and Prentiss tries to hang on to him.
Girl Number Four is the tragedy. She evidently is fast and easy and drinks a lot of alcohol. She even told her parents some lie about where she is, just so she could go down to Florida for sleaze and sin in the sand. She hooks up with another drunk staying in a hotel room downstairs from where the four girls have their quarters. She eventually gets raped "or something" and wanders around in a suicidal haze, almost getting struck out in traffic. Notice how her dress is ripped in the close-shot scenes, but when she's wandering across the street, the dress is somehow not ripped.
The slap to traditional values ends as vacation ends and everyone has to pack up and go back where they came from, with or without marriage plans.
I rate this movie a two out of a possible five; it's interesting to view if you want to start pinpointing how Hollywood undermines true, unchanging values (see my review of "Sabrina" with Audrey Hepburn on DVD). After watching "Where The Boys Are" through the view of an eternal perspective, you can't help but wonder Where The Men and Women Are.