"These are good!" Scott McKay (Dean Cameron) declares with a mouth full of curly fries as drops off the rest of them to a rude customer in the restaurant where he works. Scott has no qualms about eating this jagoff's food because he's a rebel. Dean Cameron is one of my favorite character actors and he had the delightful ability to play this type of smartass anti-establishment kinda dude in a very delightful way. Look at some of his classic roles like Chainsaw in SUMMER SCHOOL and Dave Marshak in SKI SCHOOL. He's fantastic and he's one of those actors that inspires a knowing high five from his fans when he pops up in movies (and he is prone to just showing up out of nowhere - sometimes in small but colorful roles). Whether he's playing the video store guy in KICKING AND SCREAMING or the pizza delivery guy in MEN AT WORK, Dean Cameron always entertains. He even played Jeff Spicoli in the short lived FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH TV Series.And let's talk about Ami Dolenz for a second. Holy smokes, what a cutie. Any boy in his teens who saw her in the Tony Danza epic SHE'S OUT OF CONTROL immediately fell in love with her. I was one of those kids. After that, I saw her in TICKS and briefly in CAN'T BUY ME LOVE and my crush only got bigger. I sue the word adorable a lot to describe lady actors, but Ami Dolenz is truly one of the most adorable gals in the history of cinema. On top of that, her dad is Micky Dolenz from the frickin' Monkees! How cool is that? Anyway, she didn't make enough movies for my money, but MIRACLE BEACH is one of my favorites in her oeuvre.
The premise is simple. Scot McKay is romantically hopeless until he comes across a literal genie in a bottle (Ami Dolenz). Her name is even "Jeannie". She sets Scott up real good to impress the girl of his dreams, but he has to decide of thats truly the way to be happy or not. I love sex comedies in general. The mood and raucous fun that they perpetuate is gratifyingly pleasurable for me. I associate sex comedies with lots of good memories. My first nudity and giving me an idea of what college would be like (which it wasn't) among them. One thing that is neat about late-cycle genre entries is that they often start to get creative to stay interesting. While the sex comedy as a genre has been around a long time, there was an obvious boom in the early and mid 1980s that was petering out by 1992 when MIRACLE BEACH landed. Like me, I'm sure a ton of folks saw the movie for the first time on VHS or late night cable. I know it became a small classic at our video store after we came across it because of Dean Cameron and Ami Dolenz. So MIRACLE BEACH has a lot of the tropes of your average "boner jam" (as they have been affectionately called), but it also throws in the magic realism of the genie thing. It helps make this movie more memorable and more silly. While sex comedies are kind of all about male "wish fulfilment", few take it to this literal place.
Outside of the obvious cult cache that comes with actors like Cameron and Dolenz, MIRACLE BEACH also has an amazing ensemble of other cult talent including supporting turns from Vincent Schiavelli, Martin Mull, Allen Garfield and Pat Morita.
You can buy the Blu-ray on Amazon here:
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2 comments:
Sarah and I despise this movie.
Not mentioned here: This is (supposedly)a sequel to "Hardbodies", with Dean C. playing Grant Cramer's Scotty character, but with a last name change. And Alexis Arquette (future transgender) plays the most unconvincingly boob-obsessed ladies man in the history of film.
I would posit that Alexis WAS definitely "boob obsessed" in real life- but in the opposite sort of way!
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