Spring Fling - Frühling in Watercrest

This is a TV romantic comedy where Linda Hayden (Joyce DeWitt) has taken her all male class on an excursion in Los Angeles. They got lost along the way and ended up lodging at an empty hotel, run by Linda's old boyfriend George (James Eckhouse). Linda's students plan on having a keen time on their excursion and getting acquainted with some girls they met, while Linda tries to keep her boys grounded.

This movie wasn't really exciting as I remembered, with a weak plot and lack of intrigue. The story of the male students and the girls reminded me of one of those silly teenage flicks with an uninteresting romantic twist. The saving grace of the movie was Joyce DeWitt, a good actress whom I enjoyed watching in Three's Company.

Overall, it's a pretty boring movie. You might get a few chuckles but it won't hurt to give this a pass.

Grade D+

The television film has Joyce Dewitt who returned to television after 11 years in this movie. She played Linda Hayden, a divorced chaperone of a bus filled with excited high school teenage students on their spring break. She reunited with an old high school classmate who also is planning to sell their beachfront motel that his two children call home. It's a forgettable film overall. Joyce deserved better though. Danny Gans, James Eckhouse and Pat Harrington also do well here.

I remember being astonished when this film came out because it seemed anachronistic, like a beach blanket movie from the '60s that had been transported into the '90s and with actors who felt like they had been time-warped into the cast. It's the standard romance-on-spring-break theme even though it doesn't actually have many scenes on the beach, with the slight innovation from the genre that the romance primarily involves the parent types rather than the kids.

Joyce DeWitt looks like she just stepped off the "Three's Company" set of a dozen years before, looking terrific with the same hair style and all. Aging Pat Harrington must have had flashbacks of some of his own lighthearted '60s films such as "Easy Come, Easy Go." Middle-aged James Eckhouse seems a little out of place as the DeWitt character's love interest, but he was enjoying his "90210" fifteen minutes of fame and does OK. The rest of the cast is totally forgettable, but they provide the necessary background complications to move the story along. Oh, yes, said story involves a bunch of boys on a field trip being chaperoned by Ms. DeWitt, though it turns out they don't really need the chaperone - maybe she does.

Nice, easygoing fare, worth a peek if just for the memories. No, I don't know where to get copies, but it would be worth your while to find one.