Chicago Tribune
Chicago, IL
March 8, 1996
Steve Johnson
**What's Malibu Shores about?
"Malibu Shores" (1996): The newest of the three Spelling series premiering this year (7
p.m. Saturday, WMAQ-Ch. 5), this NBC presentation looks to be a dip in the formulaic
well, with two sets of high school students from the right (big money) and wrong
(middle-class money) sides of the California coastal mountains pitted against each other
and the script. Former Mousketeers Tony Lucca and Keri Russell play the star-crossed,
culture-crossed lovers in a series Spelling compared to "Romeo and Juliet" and "West
Side Story." More apt comparison: "Beverly Hills, 90210."
..."Malibu Shores," Spelling's take on class difference among Southern California high
schoolers, premiers with a two hour movie Saturday (March 9, 1996) before it starts its
run as a series in that time slot next week. With a telegenic cast...a boatload of sparkling
non-sequiturs, especially the movie's perfunctory happy ending, "Malibu Shores" is one
more example of Spelling's engage-the-eyes-before-the-brain technique in action. It also
bears other Spelling trademarks, including being a lot more interested in its female than
male characters and hewing to his theory that "it's fun to watch people suffer."
Its two hours include an introductory arson, a girl's hurried loss of virginity to a lout;
radical and inexplicable character changes changes in the last ten minutes;
skateboarding, surfing and convertible car-chasing to emphasis the southern California
milieu; parenting good, bad, and mostly indiffernet; snooty teens obsessed with overt
expressions of status; at least one howling continuity problem; actresses who's names
are actually Charisma (Carpenter, and it's a misnomer) and Essence (Atkins, of what?);
and an actor whose last name is Spelling (Randy; yes, he is the boss' son, and in his
smallish role he does get to say, "Dude, I can't believe your own chick dissed you like
that.").
But it all rolls happily along like a California mudslide, and it's got, at its center, a rich
girl-working class boy romance whose principals are appealing, even if they do express
their love as follows:
Chloe: "Wait, Zack? Thanks for showing me the North Star."
Zack: "Yeah, well, I want us to show each other everything."
"It's a little bit 'Romeo and Juliet,' it's a little bit 'West Side Story,'" says Spelling over the
telephone from his production office. "When the kids are transferred from the [San
Fernando] Valley to this rich school, the snobs don't want them there and the kids don't
want to be there. So it's trying to see if kids from different financial conditions can bond
together... In the meantime we have a lot of fun. Some of the banter with the kids is really
cool."