Summer Lovers

By Jeff Shannon

After the breezy successes of Grease and The Blue Lagoon, director Randal Kleiser made what can only be described as one of the greatest guilty-pleasure movies of all time. Summer Lovers is a bubble-brained movie if ever there was one, involving a love triangle between characters who have all the depth of a Calvin Klein commercial; but you don't care because the movie's so irresistibly alluring. Daryl Hannah and Peter Gallagher play a young couple vacationing in Greece when they meet one of the island locals, a gorgeous paleontologist (French actress Valérie Quennessen) who quickly proves that when it comes to love on a Greek island, three is better than two. This innocent flirtation endures a bit of ego-bruising animosity, but suspicion eventually subsides and blossoms into a sensuously delightful ménage à trois, accompanied by a soundtrack full of early-'80s pop by Chicago, Elton John, Blondie, the Pointer Sisters, and others. In addition to suggesting an interesting use of candle wax during foreplay and treating viewers to the vision of Ms. Quennessen cavorting topless whenever the impulse strikes her (and it strikes her frequently), Summer Lovers is like a time capsule from the earliest years of MTV. It's mindless entertainment, but on vacations like this, who wants to be an intellectual?

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