Beaches

Rating

Director

Garry Marshall

Screenplay

Mary Agnes Donoghue (Novel: Iris Rainer Dart)

Length

2h 03m

Starring

Bette Midler, Barbara Hershey, John Heard, Spalding Gray, Lainie Kazan, James Read, Grace Johnston, Mayim Bialik, Marcie Leeds, Carol Williard

MPAA Rating

PG-13

Review

There was a pulp trashiness to the 1980s that was epitomized in the success of Beaches. It was also one of the last of a dying breed of female-led blockbusters that began to fade as the decade came to a close.

Bette Midler, hot off a streak of big screen successes plays C.C. Bloom, an actress and singer whose hard-fought popularity pulls her away from her longstanding friendship with Hillary Whitney (Barbara Hershey) whose travails lead C.C. to abandon her career in favor of helping an ailing friend. Exploring the power of friendship, the film starts as two girls make a fast friendship under the boardwalk in Atlantic City. Played by Mayim Bialik as C.C. and Marcie Leeds as Hillary. Although their friendship is enduring, their separation as adults begins to fracture their seemingly lifelong bond as Bloom becomes distracted by her fame.

Hershey and Midler were established names but Bialik would turn this film’s popularity and a few well received T.V. appearances into a successful career as the lead of the 1990s hit Blossom. They all turn in indelible performances with Hershey the clear standout. Based on the novel of the same name by Iris Rainer Dart, it was adapted for the screen by Mary Agnes Donoghue but it was Garry Marshall’s directorial effort that helped the film standout against a sea of mediocre imitations.

Marshall’s directorial skill was a byproduct of his television nurturing, which explains why the film feels at times as if it’s leaning hard into the saccharine-fueled elements of the story. That he not only manages to overindulge in that and prevents the film from feeling like a Movie of the Week is a testament to his deft touch. Yet, it’s the stars of the film that really deserve all the credit for the film’s success.

Midler blended her vocal talents with her comic timing to deliver an incredible performance as a jaded but faithful woman who recognized the need for her companionship over her own career. Hershey is devastating as the ill-fated lawyer whose affliction doesn’t require sympathy and must learn to accept compassion where she can find it. Throw in a marvelous Bialik as a bold, effervescent youngster who embodies all of Midler’s various traits bringing the younger version and the elder together in a seamless whole.

Beaches also features a tremendous soundtrack, allowing Midler to put her spin on several legendary tunes including “Under the Boardwalk,” “Baby Mine,” and the film’s most successful, “Wind Beneath My Wings.” They aren’t the only engaging works in the film, but they are its most notable.

With wonderful music, strong performances, and a heart-wrenching story, Beaches is a byproduct of and testament to 1980s melodrama. Few films were as adept and as sweetly excessive and that marks it as a wonderful exemplar of a bygone era in popular cinema.

Review Written

July 9, 2025