A recent vacation with a group of friends in the Outer Banks led to me watching Shag. They love the movie and have watched it many times, usually when on similar beach vacations to this one.
I had never heard of the movie. Have you? If you’re not in this group of girls who made a deal with me that if I watched Shag, they would watch The Princess Bride, I’m guessing the answer is no. Also, what’s up with people not having seen The Princess Bride?
Shag is neither the story of Scooby Doo’s partner in mystery solving, nor is about Mr. Boombastic. Rather, it’s about a group of girls in the 1960s who head away for a wild beach weekend before one of them gets married.
From the onset, it seemed obvious that Shag owes its existence to the success of Dirty Dancing. Shag was released just two years after Dirty Dancing. It’s set in the 60s. A shy girl discovers joy and love through dance. There are elaborate dance numbers. Sure, it doesn’t take place at a Catskills country club, but I’m guessing that Dirty Dancing’s runaway success led to Shag getting the green light.
There are four girls in the Shag crew. The main girl is Carson, but my favorite of the four is Pudge, her “fat” friend. As one of the girls watching the movie with me pointed out, “The only thing pudgy about her is her tits!” That’s not why she’s my favorite. She’s the underdog of the crew. Carson has the fiance at home and the new guy pining after her. Melaina, played by Bridget Fonda, has the “looks” and the hope of being a Hollywood star. I put looks in quotes for a reason. Melaina is supposed to be the hot one, but Pudge and Carson are easily cuter (and saner) than she is. Luanne rounds out the crew. There’s not much to say about Luanne, because she’s the classic stick in the mud. Every time she was giving someone a lecture, all I could think was “Can we get back to Pudge, please?” Pudge rules.
Shag is one of those two-star movies that is especially fun to watch in a large group. People heckled the movie with jokes (myself included), and it was great, because I didn’t have to worry about missing anything, because there isn’t much there. Please don’t take this as me not enjoying Shag though. I thoroughly enjoyed watching it, but more for my friends’ on-the-spot live Rifftraxing of the movie than for what was on the screen. That said, “Y’all is the horniest bunch of white folks I ever seen.” may be my new favorite line of dialogue in all of cinema and I would definitely watch this movie again with the same group of friends.
As far as I know, my friends have yet to watch The Princess Bride. Maybe next year.