Un amour de vacances

Francie Lawrence (Sandra Dee) is sixteen going on seventeen. She follows her friends who are out manhunting at the beach. She gets in trouble while swimming and gets rescued by surfer Moondoggy (James Darren). Her father tries to set her up with a proper gentleman but all she wants to do is surf. She befriends The Big Kahuna (Cliff Robertson) who follows the waves around the globe. The guys give her the nickname Gidget, girl plus midget.

I'm a little surprised by some of the rougher edges. I was expecting Frankie and Annette but this has a few aspects that are more interesting. The fact that she starts out more as a tomboy is interesting. The fact that she's surfing is outright ahead of its time. The Big Kahuna's globetrotting beach bum lifestyle is interesting. The guys taking in the little girl as one of their own is interesting. This does usher in the new genre of beach party movies. It's tiki torches and long wood surf boards. It does get into an uncomfortable age difference. It would have been great if Kahuna is simply joking around from the start. It is still struggling with some old fashion romantic entanglements. This is a very good teen movie and starting a new genre deserves some praise.

This movie came out in 1959, when I was a teenager too. It was a simpler time, and this is a fresh movie, compared to all the forced sex and dirty language added to most 'teen' movies nowadays.

Sandra Dee had just turned 16 when 'Gidget' was filmed in the summer of 1958, but even though she is small she comes across as a bit more mature. In fact, my wife guessed incorrectly that she was around 22. She may not have had a long or productive career, but she was just perfect as the gidget befriending a group of surfer bums that memorable summer in California.

Mom and dad want to fix their daughter up with this nice young man, a musician, son of an upstanding family. But she wants no part of her parents' plan, instead hanging out with her girl friends. One day at the beach, some somewhat older boys, and one 30-something beach bum, ignore the girls, but 'Moondoggie' goes out and saves 'Gidget' when she becomes entangled in seaweed. She gets hooked on surfing, buys a used board, by mid-summer is surfing as 'one of the guys.' She has fallen for 'Moondoggie' (James Darren, 23) but he just looks at her as a kid. When he eventually comes around, they find out that they are each the same two people that their parents' had tried to fix them up with at the start of the movie.

The nicest thing about this movie is depicting simpler teen times without sex and foul language.

This was definitely Sandra Dee's signature movie, and as a teen-age boy growing up in the sixties I was really taken with her. (Of course, I was not an aberration.) I saw this movie for the first time in the summer of 1959. I liked the beautiful California beach scenery, and the Four Preps music, and I was reasonably impressed with the acting. The cast was well-chosen. The cuddlesome-looking Sandra Dee was drawing, but she did not receive as much acclaim, as an actress. as she deserved; she was not only a cute bumess, but that little girl was strong-willed and outspoken in this movie. James Darren was a sharp-looking actor and singer, but his character was disgusting, since he was a bitter teen-ager with a big chip on his shoulder. If Arthur O'Connell was supposed to be serious in this movie, he did not do a good job of it as he played the role of Gidget's laughable high-strung father. Mary LaRoche was a beautiful, appealing lady who was wonderful as Gidget's mother. Jo Morrow, beautiful California beach scenery herself, was drawing in her minor role. Tom Laughlin, here about a dozen years before his "Billy Jack" days, seemed to click well with Dee in what was here his minor role. The story was more than what it appeared to be initially on the surface. It was about a teen-age girl who was at a crucial age, namely 16, and thus was in an identity crisis, and it was also about a girl who was, again, strong-willed as well. This movie was also a character study: she was infatuated with Mahuna, (Robertson)- an ex-Korean War vet in his middle thirties who lived only to surf and stay on the beach in a small hut there-, but she also was very up-front when she intonated to him that that was no way for him, nor anyone else, to live, and she thus had a pressing effect on him. (Only recently when I saw the movie on a DVD did I really notice the more serious aspect of the story.) Again, Sandra Dee was as cute as cute could be, but the movie did have a serious side. For more than one reason is it worth the time to see it.

I don't think you can get much further away from the stuff I usually watch like Cannibal Holocaust or Zombi 2 than Sandra Dee and Gidget. It's impossible not to enjoy Dee's performance. She's bubbly, spunky, and cute. What's not to like? Overall, Gidget is a sweet little movie that, for the most part, is entertaining. On the downside, far too often the sweetness turns into sappiness - something I cannot stomach.

Gidget is definitely a product of another time. Incidents that would automatically mean "sex" in a film made today are quite innocent and harmless in Gidget. A girl telling her mother that she wants to feel like a woman only means that she wants to fall in love and have a boyfriend. And watching with jaded 21st Century eyes, it's hard to imagine The Big Kahuna not being brought up on charges.

What a time capsule! A film that hearkens back to a cultural era of innocence, "Gidget" screams 1950s, with clothes, lingo, attitudes, and characters that now seem quaint. Gidget (Sandra Dee), that "pint size" sixteen-year-old who lives in Southern California, scampers down to the beach and takes an instant liking to surfing. In the process, she meets a fraternity of youthful, shirtless beach bums. Surfing, fun, and romantic complications ensue.

All fluffy and frothy in the first half, the film's plot and characters reek of bubble-gum shallowness, with dialogue to match. But the plot turns more dramatic in the second half, and characters show at least some degree of depth. Gidget comes across as smart, determined and, given her age, dubiously skilled at psychology, with words that make a big impression on The Big Kahuna (Cliff Robertson), surfers' de facto leader. Ultimately, the film conveys the theme that events and people ... change.

Visuals feature bright, splashy colors and a photogenic cast. Rear-screen projection and cast doubles, for the surfing scenes, look hokey now, but were the norm in those days. Music trends romantic and lively. Naturalistic sound of ocean waves enhances a relaxed, carefree tone.

Although perhaps needed for story balance, plot sequences that involve Gidget's parents seem stodgy, and detract from the main focus on the relationship between Gidget and her beach pals.

Sandra Dee, despite her squeaky voice, gives a performance that was better than I had expected. James Darren and Cliff Robertson add competent support.

If ever there was a film that captures the carefree, innocent life of kids in the 1950s, this is surely it. Undeniably nostalgic to older viewers, and prehistoric to younger viewers, "Gidget" will continue to fascinate, emblematic of an era that will never return.