Thursday, May 4, 2017

Phat Beach (1996)

How bad is it? Unimaginative beach flick with decent soundtrack.
Should you see it? No.


There are some differences between this film and the beach films of the 1960's: a black cast, a hip-hop soundtrack and the replacement of innuendo with raunch; it's at best a lateral shift. A chubby poet forced to work at a hamburger stand gets convinced by his cooler friend to borrow his father's car (here I was hoping for a little Ferris Bueller-style shenanigans) and drive to the beach, where they encounter a bevy of attractive women. Our hero doesn't want to bed someone unless he gets to know her - how quaint! - and he ends up in a $10000 volleyball tournament (which is like films going back to the 1930's and "let's put on a show!") Even the volleyball game isn't shot well. Coolio shows up for a couple of lines and Tiny Lister for a silent cameo. The soundtrack doesn't gel with the action and it appears that the music was given far more consideration than the script.

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