Zuma Beach

Pop singer in Los Angeles is told the record business has forgotten her--she had a hit single two years ago, but her last album lost money. She responds to this rejection by driving to the beach--her childhood sanctuary--to play in the sand and flirt with the impressionable 18-year-olds. History repeating itself: a sun-kissed 1970s update of the beach party genre, which hadn't been in vogue since the mid-'60s. Although written by John Carpenter (in his salad days) and William Schwartz, from a treatment by John Herman Shaner and Alvin Ramrus, this TV-movie has sunshine and wet sand to spare but doesn't have the canny lingo of hormone-crazed teenagers down right. Suzanne Somers, still riding high with "Three's Company", shows polish in the lead, but the younger players are hit-and-miss. Rosanna Arquette needs help rolling a joint, P.J. Soles is tired of playing volleyball, Timothy Hutton is training to be a lifeguard, Michael Biehn (as "J.D.") ruins Suzanne's sandcastle, and Tanya Roberts (with a belly-chain) is a knockout pretending to be just another dateless chick in the crowd. Not credible for one instant, and embarrassing when it tries for seriousness, but at least the scenarists keep it relatively clean. These kids want romance! How's that for a beach come-on?

I was 15 when this ABC movie of the week came out. Miss Somers being hot off the second season of Three's Company and growing in popularity, was adorable in this beach movie. Shot on the West Coast, the scenery was breathtaking. In 1978, i'm sure that executives at ABC must have wanted to capitalize on this 'Blonde of the hour' but giving her this role. Her acting in this movie was fine. It wasn't a comedy like Three's company, but it was more on relationships and the coming of age with these teenage kids. I liked the way she talked to the teenagers, she was some kind of mother figure to them. Anyway she was real pretty and really approachable. I like Suzanne Somers, i think of all the sex bombs of the 70's she's the one that aged most gracefully.

TV Movies of the Week reigned in the 1970's before cable and the video rental boom, always filling time decently enough...

And at ZUMA BEACH, escapism is pretty fine, like with sexy Kimberly Beck as Cathy, new girl in town and cousin of Rosanna Arquette's Southern California local, Beverly, who thinks apish Steven Keats, as car parking shyster Jerry McCabe, is a fox... so goes the 1970's...

But the mainline centers on a singer named Bonnie Katt: wherein Suzanne Somers, after teasing Richard Dreyfuss in AMERICAN GRAFFITI, blowing up in MAGNUM FORCE and right at the beginning of her game-changing breakthrough on THREE'S COMPANY, dons a sexy one-piece bikini, making the beach her own strutting sandbox...

With a breezy teleplay written by horror icon John Carpenter the same year he'd serve up PJ Soles a HALLOWEEN demise; here she plays Nancy, equally promiscuous as her radical cinema starlet, fawned over by a passive young man (Mark Wheeler), related to a mentoring Keats...

Yet she'd rather give it up to pre-TERMINATOR Michael Biehn's popular lifeguard anyway... ZUMA is full of eclectic pop culture and doesn't even realize it yet (including Tanya Roberts)...

"There is a God," one smitten guy says. "Yeah," adds another. "And there goes His daughter..." so thus the mortals are under Suzanne's spell -- the boys for obvious reasons, and the girls either look up to her experience and laidback aura, or don't know why she's around at all, stealing their own curvy thunder...

Yet as much as other guys try, only Keats piques her interest... As a former entrepreneur, both are dodging more promising careers...

Eventually, Somer's Katt tells everyone who she really is, and why she's taking a break from the music biz as we experience one mellow day instead of an entire chaotic weekend so the characters mean only as much as their lightweight, melodramatic problems, each with a resolution right around the sandy corner...

Like a young Timothy Hutton as a cigarette-smoking junior lifeguard (mentored by beach MC Les Lannom), who, two years shy of the Oscar-winning ORDINARY PEOPLE, scrutinizes everyone, including several shy fellas seeking creative ways to hook up with the aforementioned bikini-clad beauties -- while everyone basks in the groovy 1970's sunshine within the titular dream haven.

'Zuma Beach' is strictly a jiggle-and-giggle flick, as one commentator once put it so aptly, designed to get TV ratings and nothing more. Suzanne Somers was in the midst of her successful (and horrible) network series 'Three's Company' at the time this was made and the idea was to strike while the iron was hot.

Somers plays some kind of rock singer, believe it or not, who is experiencing a career crisis of sorts and comes out to the beach to clear her mind and look for inspiration, or something like that. The local high school beach boys just about lose their minds when they see her stretch out on the beach, though I find their own bikini-clad girlfriends such as Rosanna Arquette, Kimberly Beck and P.J. Soles a lot sexier. Somehow all their lives get intertwined, and through making sand castles and playing volleyball Suzanne somehow manages to instill self-confidence and worth in a number of these youths while finding new inspiration for her own career. Amazing.

This is the type of empty entertainment that one can find enjoyable from time to time even if it's only because it gives you a good laugh. Some of the faux-Beach Boys songs on the soundtrack may have you and your dog howling at the screen together, though.

'Zuma Beach' stars Suzanne Somers as Bonnie Katt, a fading pop star who heads for the title location for some R & R. During one eventful day, she becomes involved in the lives of the various young folk who frequent the place.

Don't look for much more plot than that in this script that was co-written by John Carpenter, whose slasher film "Halloween" was a big hit the same year that this TV movie premiered. It may not exactly be intellectually stimulating, but it does provide decent, light entertainment with some poignant moments.

Somers, hot off the successful second season of 'Three's Company', is likeable enough (and does actually sing her own songs), and yes, viewers who just want to see her in a bathing suit for 98 minutes may be fairly satisfied. The script involves rivalries, guys on the make (naturally), a young man (Mark Wheeler) thinking of leaving for greener pastures, a local figure (Steven Keats) who's built himself into this sort of mythic character, and a climactic beach volleyball game.

'Zuma Beach' is mostly noteworthy for the selection of future stars and otherwise familiar faces in the cast. Michael Biehn is fun as an antagonistic jock named J. D., but everybody here does an ingratiating job.

Overall, a nice, pleasant beach movie with attractive ladies and equally attractive photography.

Six out of 10.