Where the Boys Are

Spring break. Four college girls leave their school in the north for Fort Lauderdale in Florida. Thousands of students are there that week; the beach is full, the hotels are full and everyone is looking for someone. Merritt questions the rules of her generation and speaks openly about relationships, which was unusual for films of the period. All four have different weeks, and for one of them it ends badly. Henry Levin directs. Dolores Hart, Paula Prentiss, Yvette Mimieux and Connie Francis are in the cast. Connie Francis entered films with this one and sang the title song, which was a large success. It is among the first films to carry spring break culture into American cinema and fed the reputation Fort Lauderdale had at the time. On the surface it is comedy, and one strand is entirely dark: what happens to one of the characters is a sexual assault, and the film gives it not as a lesson but as an event. That tone is out of the ordinary for its period. The narrative conducts the argument about relations before marriage openly and gives no single answer. Its limit is structure; the four strands are not of equal strength and the comedy does not sit with the dark one. Who it is for: anyone curious about American youth films of the sixties. Who it is not for: the humour is of its time, the characters are types, and the tone is uneven.