Los Angeles college students drive or take the bus to sunny Palm Springs for holiday hijinks--but when jealousies erupt and the guys attempt to show each other up, it nearly spoils the fun. Rather smarmy variation on 1960's "Where the Boys Are", although the general tone here has a curdled, cynical undermining (released just two weeks before the Kennedy assassination, this picture's representation as slick drive-in fare for clean teens was soon to find itself nearly extinct). Contract picture for Warner Bros. Talent looks like harmless, candy-coated fun--and the cars are beauties!--but the screenplay (from future "Waltons" creator, Earl Hamner, Jr.) has a rude, pushy tone that is never acknowledged. Jerry Van Dyke is uncomfortably used as the class clown...and then there's Troy Donahue attempting to sing (the actor probably asked Jack Warner to help him branch out, and this was the one-shot result). Escapist fare certainly doesn't utilize Connie Stevens very well; having begun her acting career in Teen Terribles, it was probably disheartening for Stevens to find herself caught once again in a mindless boy-girl tug-of-war, which is no different from the juvenile vehicles of five years prior except to say the budget is bigger. ** from ****
Review of Palm Springs Weekend
