Donny and Marie Osmond (playing themselves) and their tightly wound manager Sid (Herb Edelman ) are off to Hawaii for a concert, but when a stolen Jewel winds up in Marie's possession hi-jinks ensue.
Produced during the annual hiatus for Donny & Marie's variety and financed and distributed by The Osmonds, Goin' Coconuts was supposed be a test of of Donny and Marie Osmond's celebrity status by seeing if they could open and carry a feature film. A critical and commercial dud upon release, the movie has been mostly forgotten, and rightly so because it's a pathetic excuse for a movie that is ineptly directed and acted.
Despite allegedly being the focal point of the movie, Donny & Marie are often relegated to the background while we focus on an assorted of TV character actors engaging in pratfalls, double takes, or other limply played comic gags that don't raise so much as a snicker let alone a laugh. The movie is directed by veteran sitcom director Howard Morris and can't maintain comic momentum or edit scenes to give the gags any life or punch. None of the scenes involving the crooks are funny, but they are at least slightly more engaging than the Osmonds themselves. Donny and Marie have no stage presence when it comes to acting, they basically have one mode in this movie and it's wide eyed smiling niceness, while that can sometimes be used for comic effect here it isn't because more often than not Donny and Marie are blissfully unaware of most of the farcical scenes surrounding them so there's no comic friction played off their unnaturally smiley demeanor. The movie is rated PG for reasons I can't discern as I've seen G Rated Disney comedies from around the same time like No Deposit, No Return or Snowball Express that felt way edgier than this.
Goin' Coconuts is a failure. It's a failure to extend the Osmonds repertoire to feature films, it's a failure as comedy, it's even a failure as a travelogue to Hawaii because the movie has a very flat look to it that doesn't capture the state's natural beauty and is instead focuses on limp wristed attempts at comic caper cliches that are ineptly done with no drive or impact. It's just a waste of everyone's time for all concerned.
