Essentially this is a remake by Crown International of their fairly successful 1978 comedy, Malibu Beach. It features the same scenario, a similar story line devoted to coming of age in a fairly pervasive drug culture, and similar comedy lines - right down to the dog that snatches bikini tops from beach babes sleeping on the sand. What do you expect from such a movie? It will not educate you, give you anything to think about, involve you in the lives of complex or interesting cast members, or even stimulate you in any way. It will however pass the short time spent quite pleasantly, particularly if you are watching it with friends or have a partner to share it with. If this is what you want, the film is competently made and deserves a fairly high rating, if you want more it is a disaster that you will inevitably class as a turkey.
I personally very much prefer it to its forerunner Malibu Beach largely I think because the characters, although transparently simple, are more real and less heavily less caricatured. If there is a message, it is that the world needs lots of readily available marihuana to put us all into a warm comfortable frame of mind in which many of the unpleasantnesses of life can be forgotten. This is a message of which I would strongly disapprove, and which would make it difficult for me to say kind words about any film. However I do not believe this film is intended to have any message at all. It simply aims to feature the lifestyle of young people who have grown up in a culture where marihuana use is widespread, without making any moral judgments. It is played purely as a farce, which gets very close to becoming pure slapstick but never quite crosses the line - again I think because the characters, whilst all overdrawn to varying extents, remain real recognisable people. I am not a lover of farce where characters tend to quickly become no more than cardboard cut-outs, but this is less of a problem here than with most farces.
I remember enjoying this film when I first saw it some 20 years ago (a time when my expectations from girlie movies were no doubt somewhat different). I recently saw the DVD release featuring it (as a double feature with "The Pom Pom Girls" - which is best quickly forgotten.), so I decided to re-view it and see how it (or I myself) had survived the years. My reaction after viewing it again was that I would love to meet one of the three main characters, who must now be middle aged matrons - probably with family responsibilities for teenagers of their own - and ask their recollections of participating in the making of this film. Movie making is never easy but I suspect that they would remember it as a real fun time which all the cast members enjoyed. The important point is that this fun not only comes out clearly in the film, but also makes it fun to watch. Within the constraints discussed above, I can only report that I enjoyed this film and rate it as worth about 3 stars out of five.
