They met on a beach as kids and became pen pals. C.C. was raised by a demanding stage mother and Hillary lived in some lame silver spoon world. Yadda, yadda, yadda, they grow up and get an apartment in New York City. C.C. becomes a Broadway star and Hillary marries some rich douche who cheats on her. Blah, blah, blah, they have all kinds of ups and downs and through it all C.C. is the only one that is interesting while Hillary remains boring for her entire life. Eventually the long-awaited sad scenes show up…and they’re not sad at all.
When I sat my incredibly chiseled buns down to watch BEACHES I honestly thought it was going to be for the first time, but as I was watching it, it really felt like I had seen it before. So, either I had or the script was so goddamn predictable that I just felt like I had experienced it before. Either way, BEACHES is an okay film. I’d probably give it a 6 / 10. Mainly based off Bette Milder’s performance. She was great and a real joy to watch. All the scenes without her though are snoozers. Fun vintage clothing, totally predictable story, uneven editing that I found distracting, average acting by everybody except Bette, emotional scenes that fall flat, a few outdoor NYC street scenes that look like they might really just be a set, boring camerawork, multiple bars/clubs with the same pinkish-purple lighting, unsympathetic character (Hillary) that we’re supposed to be crying over but yet she never seemed to be a good friend to C.C. ever. She should have stopped hanging out with her 20 years ago! Also, maybe I'm a big dummy, but I could never figure out the level of C.C.'s fame.
There was a rumor (created by me in about 3 seconds) that there was a script written for a BEACHES 2 written in 1990 where Hillary’s young daughter, Victoria, who was adopted by C.C., grows up and becomes addicted to opioids and joins a Manson-like 2.0 cult that preys on social media influencers. Sadly, the script was never picked up for production due to legal threats by the powerful Ed Wood estate dealing with a subplot about a cross-dressing assassin that appeared to be borrowed from Wood’s 1965 novel “Killer in Drag”. There was also the problem that audiences would have had no idea what the fuck social media influencers were back in 1990.
