Review of Beaches (1988) by Pat W — 03 Jun 2008

I was very pleasantly surprised with "Beaches." I usually do a bit of research before I watch a movie (probably a bad habit, but I can't help it) and what I found for Beaches was that girls tended to adore it, and guys/movie critics...not so much. What I found here, however, was a heartbreaking yet hopeful tale of two friends who go through the ups and downs of life, only to come out stronger and better because of eachother.

"Beaches" had alot going for it. Table of Contents for this paragraph: Music, Acting, Directing. The music was incredible--it always seemed to fit each scene with the greatest ease, and Bette Midler is probably one of the best pop vocalists this world has seen in 30 years. The performances were magnificent as well. Bette Midler (again, I have to shower praises on Midler) gave one hell of a performance in "Beaches," an Oscar-worthy performance at that (if the Academy Awards had taken this film seriously.) Her body language, facial expressions, and tone always worked. They just worked. She never overdid it, she never underdid it, and for the 123 minutes that "Beaches" ran, I almost forget she was Bette Midler. Did I mention tone? Yes, I did, but I must mention it again. Bette Midler is a master of tone in this movie. And the fact that she got to enter her comfort zone of stage performing for several upon several scenes (including a very humorous one involving a broadway show about the invention of the "titsling") was a big help to the film's overall success. Barbara Hershey had a tougher part to play--a character always walking the tightrope of vulnerability and successfulness, and then toward the end, that rope is thrown away and she must balance a new one-- the tightrope of immense sentimentality and realism. Yet, miraculously, with all the juggling she has to do with her character, she remains constantly believable, which is why the film's closing scenes are so memorable and effective. Both leads give fantastic performances, and are both worthy of a five-star review. The directing is, like the movie as a whole, a pleasant surprise. The way Marshall handles the camera and the lighting almost approaches a Spielberg level of maturity in many scenes, and a film such as "Beaches" needed that little bit of artistic flair, since the story is a pretty straight narrative with very little symbolism, metaphores, or motives. That's not to say that it's perfunctory--not every film needs that deep value, and the story of Beaches--the script--provides the film with enough heart to get by perfectly. It's not an art film, nor should it be, but the directing by Garry Marshall gives it that quality in a more subtle way.

So, why only the three stars? Well, 'Beaches' is a bit too long. There were long stretches of the movie that I was bored and didn't even really care about my characters much. The movie made it up to me as time continued, and by the end, I was very emotionally invested within both Bette and Barbara's characters. But there was much editing that needed to be done. Secondly, many of the plot elements were eye-roll-inducingly cliche. The film did a good job in containing the reactions TO these cliche moments, though, (when Bette finds out that Barbara has slept with a man that Bette has had her eye on, the scene unfolds to nothing more than a mutual agreement between the two. There's no cliche grude or catfight or silence treatment--it's handled very maturely), and so that almost made up for the obnoxiously obvious twists and turns. Thirdly, I didn't think that the flashback approach worked for "Beaches." I found it distracting, confusing, and unneeded. The story should have been told straight, in chronological order. Fourtly, and most importantly, the film took far too long to find its ending. There were at least three instances that I counted toward the end of "Beaches" that I was hoping it would fade out and go to credits. Not because I was ready for it to be over, neccessarily, but because I would have left "Beaches" would have left me with a much more powerful testament. For instance, one of the many closing scenes involves Bette Midler walking to a limo with Hershey's daughter. The camera exists behind a window of the house they've lived in for the past two months, and Hershey's daughter looks back, and we see her little eyes looking into that window, examining the house--the life--she once knew. THe music swells up, they get into the car, and THERE is where there should have been a fade. Instead, we see Bette at yet another concert, singing a song that I suppose the filmmakers thought summed up the movie quite nicely (like a little package), and then we get voiceovers and freezeframes that actually convey a tone of creepiness rather than satisfying movingness. You remember the previews for "Lady in the Water" a few years ago? And how, at the end of the commercials, a creepy child's voice would painstakingly whisper "Lady in the water, rated PG-13, starts everywhere July 15"? That's the tone that "Beaches" ends on--and on top of that, the ending of "Beaches" returns us to a picture of the two friends when they were kids. By that time, I could care less about those two as kids. The child actors who played Bette and Barbara as children are on the screen for maybe 30 minutes (at the most) compared to the actual Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey who we, as an audience, have spent the last 110 minutes with. That's who we care about--we care about their progressive journey. Miraculously, they've grown up! And we care about them as adults, not as children. If the film had ended with the window image, as opposed to the whispery, horror-esque reminder of the insignificant beginning of the movie; perhaps "Beaches" would have been far more effective.

Forgiving "Beaches" of its flaws, it was actually rather fine. The story never gets too sappy, even toward the closing, and Bette Midler's monologue that she gives to Barbara Hershey's crying daughter at the end (on the bed--for those of you who are trying to figure out what scene I'm referring to) is honestly one of the best monologues I've seen to any movie, ever. She handles it with such sincerity, and the pain in her voice is evident, but so is her attempt at trying to hide that pain, all for this little girl's sake. And, ironically, it works as a scene of suspense, because we all hope that the girl says "yes.".