Gidget Goes Hawaiian

Gidget Goes Hawaiian
June 21, 1961
Columbia
Comedy, Musical
VHS
B+

This is an utterly delightful sequel, improving on the original in every regard.  No offence to Sandra Dee, but I think this is a great debut for Deborah Walley, then almost 20.  She could actually surf and this would be far from her last beach movie.  She's spunky in a different way than Dee, more obviously tomboyish, and she actually comes across as more innocent.  (Ironic, considering her AIP roles.)  She even has a bit of chemistry with James Darren, who stops being a jerk for the last 20 or 30 minutes of the movie.

Instead of just a triangle, we get a nine-sided group of teens and post-teens, with various pairings possible, although if the movie does have a weakness, it's that two of the guys and two of the girls are forgettable.  The other girl, Abby, is played by the deliciously feline Vicki Trickett.  (She's even scared of water, which pays off in her "punishment" at the end.)  Moondoggie's main rival is Michael Callan, playing a charming dancer, Eddie Horner.  (He gets saddled with a Broadway-Melody-Ballet-like number, but it's shorter and more bearable.)  Joby Baker actually plays a different character in this one (not just his nickname, since Judge has never met Gidget or Moondoggie before), and he adds to the hokey comedy.  Not that the film isn't genuinely funny much of the time.

It helps that Gidget's parents and Abby's are played by respectively Carl Reiner, Jeff Donnell (she nicknamed herself after "Mutt and Jeff," not after Moondoggie's birth name), Peggy Cass, and Eddie Foy, Jr.  They get a lot of screen time and they deserve it.  Not only do they all know how to make the most of out of their lines, but they manage to make Gidget's suspicions of wife-swapping plausible.  Yes, wife-swapping, although it's not called that.  She has a vivid imagination, and when Abby spreads rumors that Gidget sleeps around (not that it's called that), Gidget imagines herself as, in order, a streetwalker, a fan-dancer, and an unwed mother!  The movie is surprisingly outrageous, and even has jokes about suicide.  Yet it never comes across as sleazy.  Even when Moondoggie, Eddie, and Judge are singing the title tune and 'Doggie emphasizes, "When the Gidget goes Hawaiian, she goes Hawaiian all the way," it's suggestive, not tasteless.

This is the most fun movie of the '60s so far.  I will note in terms of continuity, that this is allegedly set the summer after the first movie, making Gidget almost 18.  Jeff pinning her is changed to this year rather than last.  I'll talk more about chronology when we get to Gidget Goes to Rome, also written by Ruth Brooks Flippen.

Donnell would return as Mrs. Lawrence for GG to Rome, but Foy would be "Beachgoer Wanting to Use Phone."  Don Edmonds, who plays forgettable guy Larry, would do Beach Ball.