The Complete Gidget Collection

It's the original all-singing, all-surfing beach party movie, starring the original surfer girl. Gidget (1959), based on the novel by Frederick Kohner, is a mixed bag of horrifyingly retro anti-feminism--16-year-old Gidget (Sandra Dee) laments having expended all her effort on getting straight A's when she should have been learning how to catch a man--and surprising frankness: the s-e-x word actually passes someone's lips, and in this summer when the Southern California golden girl discovers both surfing and boys, she's willing to put herself in the (she thinks) dangerous path of the king of the beach, the Big Kahuna (Cliff Robertson--boy, was he a cutie back then!). All she really wants, though, is surf boy Moondoogie (James Darren), so they can continue their misadventures in 1961's Gidget Goes Hawaiian and 1963's Gidget Goes to Rome. All three films are included in this double-disc extras-bereft set, and it's rather disconcerting to see Gidget morph from Dee to Deborah Walley, in Waikiki, to Cindy Carol, in Italy (James Darren stays on as Moondoogie through all three films). These are--as unlikely as this may sound--seminal films, if merely of the silly-teen-girl genre: three-quarters of the silly teen romantic comedies and the entire oeuvre of the Olsen sisters descend from Gidget and Moondoogie. Unfortunately, although Gidget was originally filmed in CinemaScope, all three films are presented in pan-and-scan full screen versions, knocking this would-be recommended set down a half-star and making it an optional purchase instead. (M. Johanson)