Metacritic reviews

I don't know what I was expecting from Back to the Beach, but it certainly wasn't the funniest, quirkiest musical comedy since Little Shop of Horrors. Who would have thought Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello would make their best beach party movie 25 years after the others?

It's a clever premise that is fully realized with old songs, old TV performers and new ones, too. This could become as big a cult movie as Pee- wee's Big Adventure. It certainly is more entertaining than that film and even more fun than Grease.

It's more fun than you'd figure, this sendup aimed at two distinct generations, only one of which ever took Annette or Frankie seriously. You wind up, by the end, thinking of them both as awful good sports. [08 Aug 1987, p.B1]

It's a light, slight premise that seems more suited to a Saturday Night Live sketch than a full-length movie, but it plays pleasantly enough in its video incarnation, where modesty sometimes can be a virtue.

Back to the Beach is fun for a while, but its six-person writing team can't figure out a logical way to wind it all up.

Much could have been done to enliven this film if the script provided more satire instead of parading the same inanities with a smirk this time around. It's harmless but in need of a transfusion.

Back to the Beach opened yesterday. But if you catch a television commercial for it, or the rock video that's on television, you'll get the joke and see the most this movie has to offer.

It's deeply vapid, with the emotional consistency of styling mousse.

Back To The Beach, starring the early '60s most popular teen-agers, Frankie and Annette, combines the campiness of a college reunion, the corniness of a high school musical, and the values of Mister Rogers. The film's only redeeming quality is that it knows it … and manages to laugh at itself occasionally. [10 Aug 1987, p.1D]