HARDBODIES -- Movie Review by Jason Hernandez

HARDBODIES (1984) makes a play for the topless record of 1984 and has serious ambitions of breaking the all-time bikini record for a movie. You can't say that it doesn't have a point.

This is your regular 80s "rot your brain" buns-in-the-sun beach sex comedy, but with one crucial difference. It replaces the usual young virgins on the make with three schlubby 30-50-something divorced guys on the make.

 

One's fat, one's bald and one's just creepy. There are 90,000 nearly naked women on this beach, jogging, skating, suntanning and bending over a lot—and NONE of them will give the time of day to our schlubs.

Enter a slick young guy (Grant Cramer) who gets five phone numbers thrown at him every time he steps out to get a hot dog for lunch. Our schlubs witness his magic and pay him to share his secrets.

Along the way, breasts are freed from their bikini top prisons, asses wiggle, we see the ultimate 80s electronic sex palace bed, all-girl rock band Vixen get in several songs during their pre-metal new wave days ("Computer Madness" is the best) and everybody gets lucky.

 

 

ONLY PROBLEM: About two-thirds of the way through, the makers figure out that they don't know how to end it. So, they have one of the schlubs suddenly be possessed by Bob from Twin Peaks and turn into a jerk who needs to be stopped.

It's a little jarring, but our brains have been turned off for almost an hour at that point and we'll accept anything. We're like a drunk eating tacos from a truck at 3 AM. As long as the world keeps spinning and the beaches are safe for hot girls in about four square inches of clothing, we're good. I'm good.

And HARDBODIES is almost good.