This is a standard '60s teen musical, no worse or flakier than the stuff AIP was putting out between 1963-67. As with those AIP films, the plot is feather light, there are some songs, and the cast is giving it their best shot.
The film is designed as entertainment, an innocuous date film teens could see at the drive in and view intermittently while making out or noshing on concession stand goodies. And this is why the Millennials hate it.
21st century audiences have never seen a film which isn't a pasteboard for political correctness. If a movie doesn't portray white men as idiots, white women as militant warriors who are always right about everything, and blacks as the most noble and brilliant characters in history without whose contributions nothing would exist, then Millennials are against it.
Of course, Millennials are also the least educated generation in American history, and the most brainwashed by leftism. They are also the first generation in history who never knew a sober human being (their grandparents being hippies, their parents being '80s crackheads and themselves being reefer babies).
So perhaps one should consider the source when listening to their criticisms of any film made for less than 250 million dollars and bereft of subversive leftist ideology.
If, however, you remember drive-in culture and enjoy AIP's daft "beach" or "pajama" films from this period, this one will seem no worse.
