A very cute Disney musical throw-back to the 1960s beach blanket movies.

TxMike

I am a product of the 1950s and 1960s, I remember the fun we had back then and I remember the 1960s beach blanket movies. This one re-visits that time with a "Pleasantville" type of twist to it.

The premise is set up during the first 16 minutes, two teenagers become boyfriend and girlfriend after a summer of fun and surfing in California (filmed in Puerto Rico). She is about to be sent off to an east coast private finishing school to fulfill her late mother's wishes, and wants to get one last, big wave in. That is when it happens!

Riding the special surfboard with the waves getting dangerous and the boy taking a jet ski out to rescue her, they both surface to very calm water. They soon figure out they have been magically transported, along with the surf board, back 50 years into the boy's favorite 1960s beach movie, the fictional "Wet Side Story." It's the bikers vs the surfers for the control of the favorite hangout. So he recognizes all the characters and the musical numbers, he is thrilled and all she wants to do it get back to present time. Not much different from the kids in "Pleasantville."

In fact, as it develops it has both a "Pleasantville" and a "Back to the Future" sensibility, as the new kid saves the girl from falling off a stage and in the process subverts the script in the movie. So part of their task becomes to get the two main characters back together. Much as Witherspoon's character did in "Pleasantville", the girl from the present tells the girls for the 1960s that they have choices, they can do what they want to do, even surf or ask a boy out.

The boy from the present is Ross Lynch as Brady and the girl from the present is Australian Maia Mitchell playing a believable American teen, McKenzie or Mack as she is mostly called. Grace Phipps is the cute, innocent biker girl from the 1960s Lela, and Garrett Clayton is the cute, innocent surfer teen from the 1960s Tanner. All of the kids are capable singers and dancers.

Barry Bostwick has a nice small role as Big Poppa, Mack's grandfather who builds surf boards.

I found it totally fun to watch, with its playing on the time-travel themes and real people influencing characters in a movie.

Then there is the very short scene during the credits, somehow the 1960s kids showed up on the beach in present time, and are taken aback by modern styles and the cell phone that talks to you!

score /10

TxMike 12 August 2014

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw3067520/