Shag (PG-13)

‘Shag’ (PG-13)

The people responsible for "Shag," a friendly but slight comedy set in South Carolina in 1963 about a group of longtime girlfriends who head to the beach for a final, postgraduation blowout, show something that's fairly rare these days -- a genuine delight in having gotten hold of their filmmaking equipment. If only this were all they needed.

Directed by Zelda Barron, "Shag" runs mostly on youthful eagerness and nostalgia, and for people who spent their teenage years dancing and drinking and falling in love to beach music, the appeal may be great. But the picture is heartfelt and naive in ways that seem totally secondhand. The questions it asks -- This boy or that boy? Should I or shouldn't I? -- have been played out in countless other coming-of-age films, from "Where the Boys Are" to "Dirty Dancing."

And though the palpable enthusiasm of its creators carries you further into the film, and further into the lives of the four friends than you might otherwise go, it is eventually replaced with a sense of weariness at the worn-thin material.

In bottom-line terms, "Shag" is about not dancing dirty. It's about teen love, not teen sex. Its main characters are all broadly drawn types. Luanne (Page Hannah) is the group's priss enforcer -- she makes sure these fine young ladies remain true to their proper Southern upbringing. Pudge (Annabeth Gish) is wholesome but curious -- she's dying to explore the world of boys and sex, but doesn't quite know how to go about it. Not knowing what to do is hardly Melaina's problem. A preacher's daughter, she's been crawling out of her bedroom window at night for years, and, as Bridget Fonda plays her, can't wait to bust out on her own for good and head for Hollywood. She's what you might call "advanced."

The group's unofficial leader, though, is Carson (Phoebe Cates). It was for Carson, whose marriage to a bland but wealthy local boy is imminent, that these best friends hatched their plot to kidnap her for a final mad escapade. But when she finds herself attracted to Buzz (Robert Rusler), a hunky beach boy who's headed for Yale in the fall, her comfy future suddenly seems deathly, and, all of a sudden, the prank turns serious.

From this point on, the movie becomes a record of Carson's crisis and the other, lesser problems of her friends. But because Barron and her screenwriters -- Robin Swicord, Lanier Laney and Terry Sweeney -- can't dramatize their young characters' emotions, the dilemmas seem trivial, weightless.

There's not much suspense in how things will work out, either. Once you've gotten a look at Carson's fiance, played by Tyrone Power Jr., you know that he's too much of a clod to turn away Buzz's romantic challenge. (In the contest between well-heeled and well-muscled, well-heeled almost never wins -- at least not in the movies.) There's slightly more tension in the romance that blossoms between Pudge and Buzz's less experienced friend Chip (Scott Coffey). Gish and Coffey bring a genuine innocence to their scenes, especially the one in which they sit on the beach, answering a quiz about their sexual histories, and are so embarrassed they have to put towels over their heads.

Fonda, on the other hand, contributes something more potent, something altogether her own. This icy blond actress -- the daughter of Peter, niece of Jane -- who earlier this year provided the best moments in the British film "Scandal," has a startlingly confident camera presence. She takes over her scenes naturally -- through sheer animal vigor, she makes it impossible to look at anyone else. (It doesn't hurt that, for most of the film, she's dressed only in a bikini.)

Most of the film's other actors have more substantial rsums, but by comparison, they look like beginners. Fonda doesn't bother herself too much with creating a character; instead she creates an attitude that's pure, pouty lasciviousness. You never quite know what she's thinking, but you can bet it's naughty. "Shag" is a passable, modest piece of work, but it isn't really big enough to contain a performance as sexually expansive as this one. She breaks it wide open.

"Shag" is rated PG-13 and contains adult situations.

Copyright The Washington Post

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