Saved by the Bell: Hawaiian Style

It's one of the best movies I've ever seen.

(Plot) Kelly's grandpa invites the gang to come stay at his hotel in Hawaii. They have a wild time in store for themselves, without Belding or anything else that resembles school. Unfortunately for them, Mr. Belding happens to be there, and they have to deal with an evil capitalist that wants to take over to build a new apartment complex.

I'm a huge Saved by the Bell fan. I own everything to do with SBTB, except for the "New Class" I even own this one, but I can't lie. This is really awful stuff. My main problem with this one is there is no passion behind it. Saved by The Bell wasn't rocket science, but they were extremely fun, and had good messages behind them. This one tries to go for the heavy message, but it just comes across as very awkward and silly. All the fun is really sapped out of this one. Is it just me? Or does Mark-Paul Gosselaar look suspiciously big here? I'm a big fan of Mark's, but it made me raise my eyebrows a bit. It just feels otiose for the most part, and lacks the entertainment something with SBTB should. The subplot between Zack & Andrea (Rena Sofer) and her kid attempts to be moving, but I garnered zero emotion out of it. Even looking at Tiffani Thiessen in a bikini gets old.

Final Thoughts: Watch it once if you're a die hard SBTB fan like I am, and then forget it even exists!

3.6/10

Saved By The Bell: Hawaiian Style is a great Saved By The Bell special. Zach, Slater, Screech, Kelly, Jessie and Lisa are obviously all in Hawaii here, up to there usual adventures. The gang are all staying at Kelly's grandpas little hotel for the summer. All they want to do obviously is have fun, but things don't go according to plan, when they realise that Mr. Belding, there high-school principle is there and not only that, but they've decided to help Kelly's grandpa in making his hotel more popular as his rival Mr. Worthington plans to take over the hotel and make it into an apartment complex. It wouldn't be Saved By The Bell, without romances and in Hawaii, Zach meets the love of his life, Andrea who has a daughter and Kelly meets a nice guy, who ends up turning out to be not as nice as she thought he was, as he's helping Mr. Worthington to close down her grandpas hotel. Along with this, Screech gets kidnapped by a Pupuku group, who think Screech is there leader. It's going to be an interesting summer for all of them.

Saved By The Bell: Hawiian Style features the usual cast of, Mark-Paul Gosselaar, Mario López, Dustin Diamond, Tiffani-Amber Thiessen, Elizabeth Berkley, Lark Voorhies and Dennis Haskins. With the addition of the brilliant Rena Sofer here. Everyone here gives great performances.

Saved By The Bell: Hawiian Style is like any of the Saved By The Bell Shows/Special. It's really good and if you're of a fan of Saved By The Bell, then you're bound to enjoy this.

Watching Saved by the Bell: Hawaiian Style again after all these years made me instantly question my sanity as a teenager. Did I actually like this crap back then? I know this was never my favorite thing that they put out for Saved by the Bell, but I didn't remember it being this awful. For starters, Screech is at his all-time most obnoxious in this movie. He's acting like a strange space alien the entire time, and it made me question if he ever acted like a human being on the show. Almost every other character is at least a caricature of a normal person, but that didn't make them much more enjoyable to watch. Even when they are trying to do something nice, they have to accomplish it in the most lazy and pathetic way possible. Their success in this film comes through nothing more than lies and downright criminal activity, which I suppose is Zack Morris's modus operandi, but now that I'm an adult all I can see is that he is in the wrong. It's kind of a shame to watch poor Dean Jones being dragged down with this ship.

I know that production for a TV movie is different from a theatrical motion picture, but the shoddy quality of this one is inexcusable. It's filmed like an extended episode of the TV show, so the shots of Hawaii almost all appear to be stock footage, and the rest looks only marginally better than a home movie. The actors even have the same cadence and rhythm that they used in episodes of the show, so they pause after all the lame humor for a laugh track and it is extremely awkward since no one is going to even offer a chuckle at this nonsense. The music is a blend of tracks used in the TV show, and there are a few awful original songs they throw in just to make this "special." The plot is not an engaging one, and is 100% predictable. The romance for Zack is painful to watch, and some of the cliche-filled lines that come out of their mouths were embarrassing. At this point I don't trust my memory of Saved by the Bell, but I will say when I was younger I thought the season where they spent the summer working on the beach was much better than this, so perhaps this was an all-time low. But I won't be rushing to watch any more of this nonsense to find out.

This movie was kinda sweet. I enjoyed this movie because I am a Saved by the Bell fan, but...I've never seen so many stereotypes of Hawaii in my life. Besides changing the geography of the island and making locals seem like dorks, there were hardly any locals in the movie. Majority of the cast were white and I did not see a hint of real Hawaiian culture. It was just cheesy.

Besides the cheese though, I did like the antics of the gang. Their adventures were quite entertaining. This is a good movie if you just want mindless fun and do not actually expect to see or learn anything about Hawaii.