Hardbodies

This film is a good waste of time if you like gratuitous nudity and bad acting. Watch it on a rainy day.

Before sitting down to watch Hardbodies, decide what you are looking for out of this film. Do you want a well-written movie with an engaging plot, Oscar-worthy performances and beautifully-written dialogue? Then stay away from this movie. Do you want to see a fairly entertaining movie centered around fitting as much gratuitous shots of topless women as possible? Then you've found what you're looking for!

Hardbodies is a cheesy, 80's teen sex movie. But if you like cheesy, 80's teen sex movies, it's actually pretty good. It's better than any of the other ones out there. Some funny, quotable lines. A few entertaining characters. And many, many hot naked women. I mean, really -- how can you go wrong when there's bikini tops flying off before the opening credits even end?

First saw this on HBO numerous times in the mid-1980s. Didn't see it again until recently, and I have to say it holds up pretty well. Decent plot, passable acting and plenty of eye candy. The odd thing is, this low-budget movie, comprised of unknowns and just a T&A sexploitation flick, holds together better than many contemporary big budget star comedies, such as Grown-ups or Hot Tub Time Machine. There is more cause and effect here than in either of those two current movies. Meaning, instead of starting with an idea and then just moving from one comic vinette to another, the actions of the characters are actually germaine to the plot throughout the movie. The movie breezes along, but keeps the viewer interested the whole time.

I remember watching this film when I was thirteen and just loving it: gorgeous naked women, gorgeous naked women, gorgeous naked women! Now my thoughts would be: 80s! 80s! 80s! AAAAGGGH! Okay, the 80s weren't so horrible, and I have fond memories of them, and this completely trashy teen sex flick (pretty much the quintessential movie of this quintessentially 80s genre) will zoom you back there so fast, you'll get whiplash and snap the flourescent strap on your sun glasses. Oh, the naked women are still gorgeous, but this thing never can have the same sort of fantastic appeal it did when you were 13 and afraid your parents would walk in the door while you and your buddies were watching it.

"Hardbodies" delivers what you should expect from a lightweight 80's sex comedy: plenty of fantastic-looking girls in bikinis or topless, a fun-carefree-sunny-summer-California-beach atmosphere, a couple of chuckles, and lots of 80's music. It does not deliver high cinematic artistry or a brilliant plot, but then again you should not expect any of that. The two main girls, Teal Roberts and Cindy Silver, are both enormously appealing and pleasantly natural, and the two main guys, Grant Cramer and Courtney Gains, are likable. The premise might have worked better if we had younger nerds in the roles of the middle-aged men, but to its credit the movie acknowledges their age and somehow manages to get away with it. It's the girls who are the most important here anyway, and as I said the casting was very good right down the line - I don't remember looking at even one less-than-pretty girl in this movie, even at the background. One of THE prettiest is no doubt a very young Kathleen Kinmont, in her first movie role: she doesn't get naked, yet her very tight white T-shirt leaves little to the imagination. (**1/2)