Back to the Beach ** (1987, Frankie Avalon, Annette Funicello, Lori Loughlin, Paul Reubens, Tommy Hinckley, Don Adams, Bob Denver) – Classic Movie Review 6219

‘Fasten your seat belts and get ready for a totally NEW WAVE motion picture experience.’ The iconic Sixties stars Annette Funicello, Frankie Avalon and Connie Stevens find useful film work in director Lyndall Hobbs’s kitsch and trashy 1987 movie about surfers who go back to the beach in their forties to assist their troubled youngsters. It is the last Beach Party movie in a series that started back in 1963 with Beach Party.

There is a decent sitcom idea somewhere here, with Avalon and Funicello as the dizzy parents of teenagers. But half a dozen writers (screen-writers Peter Krikes, Steve Meerson and Christopher Thompson; story-writers James Komack, Bill Norton and Bruce Kirschbaum) can’t make this fair idea very amusing or touching and leave the nice Sixties stars largely stranded.

Avalon and Funicello play one time beach-partying married couple Frankie and Annette, who visit their grown-up daughter Sandi (Lori Loughlin) in Southern California, who pretends she isn’t shacked up with her boyfriend.

It includes an appearance by Paul Reubens, better known as Pee Wee Herman, as well as Tommy Hinckley, Don Adams, Bob Denver (in his last film) and Jerry Mahers.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 6219

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Bikini were a fifth of swimsuit sales by 1988.