Product Description

A group of Midwest girls head down to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida for spring break.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2269 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2004-01-06
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 99 minutes

Amazon.com
The movie that put the Break into Spring, Where the Boys Are inspired thousands of college kids to seek sun, surf, and even s-e-x on the beaches of Florida. A bevy of co-eds (including foxy Yvette Mimieux and delightful Paula Prentiss, in her film debut) make for Fort Lauderdale, finding fun but also quite a bit of heavy-breathing drama. It's a little like a dressier, glossed-up version of the Problems with Today's Youth movies that were filling up the drive-ins of the era. The movie's actually pretty frank for 1960, although these days the lightweight stuff with Prentiss and Jim Hutton holds up best. There's also Connie Francis, who plays one of the college girls and croons the great title tune (which belongs on anybody's mix tape of classic teen-beach music). The film was remade, with vague Orwellian overtones, as Where the Boys Are 84, a truly dismal effort. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews

Don't Be Mislead By Superficial Reviews
Don't be mislead by superficial reviews of a supposedly superficial movie. This is a movie for everyone who ever went someplace else to find himself. A group of teen-aged girls go on a road trip to Ft. Lauderdale to spend Spring Break. On the way, they join some guys who are doing the same thing. As each of them finds peace with his or her own personal dilemma, they emerge as adults ready to face adult obligations. They will have problems, even big ones, but you can see that because they know more about themselves and each other, they will be able to face their futures with wisdom and courage. Everyone, and I mean, everyone in the cast performs beautifully. The film is funny, moving, insightful, and entertaining and I haven't changed my opinion since I first saw it when I was a lost teen. Maybe I'm getting more out of it than the author intended, but this film will make you care about the characters and feel good about the future, your own and everyone else's.

Classic joy
The strangest part of this film was the obvious decision that Connie Francis was not beautiful enough to play a romantic dramatic lead. So they cast her as sort of a Nancy Walker type comedienne, supposedly not attractive enough to be taken seriously but just perfect for comic relief. But watching the film that makes no sense. First, Francis steals every scene she's in. Second, she is absolutely darling. Third, as Paula Prentiss herself has said, it's hard to swallow Connie as someone who couldn't get a date, or a handsome date, since what guy could resist such a cute, right-there, sparkling, personable girl. This odd casting aside, the film has stood the test of time, is still fresh, fun, beguiling, tuneful and without one wasted moment. All the leading ladies are wonderful and went onto interesting careers (one as a nun). The leading guys did all right too. This made a ton of moolah for a very pleased M-G-M Pictures, found a big college audience, and is still refreshing entertainment.

"Where the boys are...someone waits for me..."
It's Spring Break, and four man-hungry coeds leave the Midwest snow behind and drive to Ft. Lauderdale for fun in the sun. Brainy Merritt (Dolores Hart) falls hard for Ivy Leaguer, Ryder (George Hamilton), while Tuggle and TV (Paula Prentiss and Jim Hutton) pair up for laughs. Singer Angie has eyes for musician Basil (Connie Francis, Frank Gorshin) and sweet Melanie (Yvette Mimieux) just wants to date a real Yalie.

Has it really been 45 years since "WTBA" was first released? Just hearing the opening notes of the gorgeous theme song, sung so earnestly by Connie Francis, brings back 1960 in all its glory...when girls went to college to find a husband, college boys were still called "boys," and Spring Break was so wholesome that there was nary a Girl Gone Wild on the whole beach. This movie is innocence personified, although some of the dialogue was actually considered racy at the time. A lot of it concerns what good girls would and wouldn't do, with (pre-tan) George Hamilton dropping some persuasive, if corny, lines while pursuing the ethereal Dolores Hart.

If you have fond memories of one-piece bathing suits and shirt-waist dresses, join Connie in singing the theme song (you know you remember the words), and relive those wonderful days. This is not your granddaughter's Spring Break movie, it's yours. Enjoy.

Kona