Entertaining “Chick flick” with Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey

Two preadolescent girls meet on the beach and become lifelong friends living on two different coasts. The brassy CC Bloom (Bette Midler) is a performer living in New York City while the classy, but reserved Hillary (Barbara Hershey) lives on the West Coast. Bubbly Mayim Bialik appears as the 11 year-old version of CC in the opening act while likable John Heard has a fairly notable part.

“Beaches” (1988) is an 80’s “chick flick” that throws in drama, realistic comedy, romance, Broadway entertainment and music. It’s also... read the rest.

"Beaches" is an earnest and well meaning film throughout that always favours the overbearing and self important Bette Midler at the expense of the much more insipid Barbara Hershey as it endeavours to tackle the notion of a friendship which spans decades and supersedes all other considerations, but such a misplaced and lofty ambition as this is often an almost impossible aspiration to realistically achieve during a two hour period so we are consequently rushed through a sketchy succession of highs and lows of two lives with no real sense of any emotional bonds developing or being ruthlessly tor... read the rest.

There's something quite uncanny about the resemblance between the young "CC" (Mayim Mialik) and Bette Midler who plays her adult self in this quite touching story of lifelong friendship. That all starts when this ordinary youngster meets the well-heeled "Hillary" (Marcie Leeds then Barbara Hershey) and despite being from opposite sides of the tracks, they begin to bond. The former has a love of all things showbiz but isn't exactly getting her name up in lights as she gets older. Her friend had a much better starting position and builds up a successful legal career as well as having a daughter w... read the rest.