Movie Reviews : ‘Under the Boardwalk’: Harmless Teen Fare

After the murderous “Heathers,” it may take a few weeks to readjust to the usual round of teen films in which handsome youths merely hit--rather than enact homicide on--one another. From the same company, New World, comes the benign surfing picture “Under the Boardwalk” (citywide), just in time to reassure the quavering Western World that girls really do just want to have fun, and gangs of boys can cheerfully fix up their feuds by film’s end.

On the scale set by its subversive predecessor in adolescent hijinx, what satire there is in “Boardwalk” barely registers. But viewed against competing teen drive-in fare, it’s fairly perceptive and gets most of the pertinent details right, no big deal to most of us, but a lot to ask for when you’re a kid locking lips with a steady in a Chevy, trying not to choke on the inexactitudes coming over the car speaker.

Director Fritz Kiersch gives us a fairly lifelike beachfront (a composite of Hermosa Beach, Malibu and Seal Beach) where young men lust through purple visors at packs of young women roving PCH in open-topped Rabbits or Cabriolets; where punk gangs and Surfers for Christ have competing side-by-side campfires; where surf-obsessed hunks plan to ditch their dates for waves come morning; where the idea of consuming great ancient mythology is to rent a video of “Big Wednesday” for the umpteenth time.

Most of the best moments come in the first half, as Kiersch gives even the supporting players equal weight in what’s an essentially lightweight story. Screenwriter Robert King may actually have dared to hang around a few teen-agers; he throws in ample surfer lingo but, wisely, doesn’t overdo the slang. (There’s a very funny eavesdropping scene early on in which a local girl interprets the colloquialisms for an out-of-state boy, a subtler version of the jive translation scene in “Airplane.”)

The second half is far weaker and barely plods forward when the inevitable romance takes shape and takes over. At its center are two wholesome victims of puppy love at first sight, the only problem being that he’s a Val (that is, Valley boy), and she’s not only a Lowk (or local) but has a brother who just happens to be her new boyfriend’s most bitter rival on or off the swells. Our hero is sensitive and headed for Harvard; our heroine wants him to stay out of trouble; but there’s a rumble planned as well as a surf competition. The Jets are all here, and wherefore art thou, Romeo? Zzzzzz.

As the not-so-star-crossed lovers, Danielle von Zerneck (Donna in “La Bamba”) and Richard Joseph Paul have the appropriate white-bread goods. But the best, most comedic parts go to perpetually fresh-faced Keith Coogan, as a cornfed cousin from the Midwest, and Roxana Zal (“Testament”), playing a feisty female surfer as ill-tempered and foul-mouthed as she is tanned and gorgeous.

An amusing, futuristic framing device in “Under the Boardwalk” (MPAA-rated R for, uh, salty language) happily lets us know that these latter two misfits end up basking in the briny together, even after the Big One finally turns the Santa Monica Bay the same shade of bright purple as all those visors.