Where the Boys Are (1984)

You know that theory of human cloning that says that if you make a clone of a clone of a clone, the results will be diluted and far less defined than the original the more copies you make? Where the Boys Are is kind of like that. It comes so far down the line of Horny Teenager flicks that even the mere idea feels watered down and diluted. There is nothing here you haven’t seen before even from fellow inferior clones.

The pitch idea, flimsy as it was, might have seemed tantalizing. There is the typical standard, average story of kids who are up to no good heading to Fort Lauderdale to party and get laid. The twist is that instead of four guys, there are four girls. That’s not exactly a step forward for women especially considering that this female quartet is just as boneheaded as any quartet of guys. If that’s equality God help us all.

The movie follows these four college girls down to Ft. Lauderdale for spring break. There is the potential to build characters there. There’s Laurie (Lynn-Holly Johnson, who won a Razzie for this) who thinks and dreams only of hot sex with a hunk. There’s Sandra (Wendy Schaal) who seeks the heart of a good man. There’s Carol (Lorna Luft) who needs a vacation from her boyfriend. There is Jennie (List Hartman) who is torn between the affections for a stuffy concert pianist and a rocker. The potential, you can see, is there to build some characters but the movie doesn’t have that kind of energy. This isn’t a movie so much as a checklist of antics from a hundred other party movies.

The characters are irritating. They talk in short, clichéd sentences and only do what is required of them by the genre. I could say that the camera loves them but even that little detail is lost on this film. The title suggests more than the movie can provide. Hearing it may illicit memories of the old Connie Francis ditty (never heard here) from the 60s but one look at the film takes a bat that notion. The soundtrack that is on display is dead as a doornail.

The only point of interest in this film is to note that it was produced by Allan Carr three years before he produced the Oscar show that paired Snow White and Rob Lowe in a duet of “Proud Mary” and three years after he unleashed The Village People’s “Can’t Stop the Music” into the very first Best Picture award at the Razzies. ’nuff said.