The Flamingo Kid

ABC/Mercury. Director Garry Marshall; Producer Michael Phillips; Screenplay Neal Marshall, Garry Marshall; Camera James A. Contner; Editor Priscilla Nedd; Art Director Lawrence Miller

Matt Dillon
Richard Crenna
Hector Elizondo
Jessica Walter
Molly McCarthy
Janet Jones

The Flamingo Kid, set in 1963, sports the amusing trappings connected with 18-year-old Matt Dillon working for a summer at the El Flamingo Beach Club in Far Rockaway, NY. At its heart, though, story has to do with the critical choices facing a youth of that age and how they will help determine the rest of one's life.

Taken out of his rundown Brooklyn neighborhood one day to play cards with friends at the club, Dillon ends up getting a job there parking cars. He is soon promoted to cabana boy, and also attracts the attention of blonde UCLA student Janet Jones, with whom he has a skin-deep summer fling, and her uncle Richard Crenna, a sharp-talking sports car dealer.

Dillon does a good job in his fullest, least narcissistic characterization to date.

(Color) Available on VHS, DVD. Extract of a review from 1984. Running time: 100 MIN.

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