Miracle Bikini Factory
My favorite movie from the 80’s has to be Miracle Bikini Factory (1985). I used to stay up all night in hopes USA Network would show it. I wonder if it still holds up.
The plot was pretty standard:
Tad Gunther plays Kip Hartman, a lovable beach bum with great hair and cool shades. The film starts with Kip getting caught in the stock room with his boss’s topless wife. (It’s all a comical misunderstanding, but I don’t want to ruin how she ends up topless.) So, Kip gets fired.
He goes to stay with his equally lovable beach bum friends, who just got evicted when their homemade robot went haywire. Its beer dispenser was set to the wrong level. Now where are they gonna stay?
The answer comes in the form of a stiff, English butler carrying an envelope on a silver platter. It’s the last will and testament of Kip’s great-aunt Gertrude. She’s left Kip a bikini factory, located right on the boardwalk.
Unfortunately, when Kip and his friends get there, the factory is in complete disrepair. Some of the chairs are turned over and the walls are scattered with neon-colored graffiti. It seems like there’s no way they can get it working … until Kip finds a magic lamp under a pile of bikinis.
That’s when Jeanie the Genie shows up. She’s been stuck in the lamp, because she flunked out of genie school. Maybe she’s just what the guys need to keep the bikini factory from foreclosure at the hands of Mr. Snively, Kip’s ex-fiancé’s father.
There’s an extended montage, where the guys convince models on the beach to help them clean up the factory.
They throw a huge party, and Jeanie magically makes a heavy metal band’s tour bus break down right outside. Everybody’s there, including Kip’s ex- fiancé, whom Jeanie gets jealous of. But, Jeanie doesn’t get a chance to profess her love to Kip, because Mr. Snively has the police come and confiscate all the money from the party.
Their only hope is the annual Beach Obstacle Course Competition, where the winner gets $10,000. (At this point I should mention that Jeanie can’t make money appear, because her powers don’t work when she’s in love.) The models stay up all night making team uniforms, which are bikinis with neon-colored spray paint.
The obstacle course scene is shot in slow-motion.
They end up getting disqualified, because it’s against the rules to have a beer-dispensing robot for a mascot. All seems lost until an Arabian sheik pulls up in a limousine and loves the team uniforms so much that he orders enough to save the factory.
Jeanie tells Kip that she loves him, which breaks a spell and turns her into a normal girl. Kip’s beach bum friends marry the models. And, it turns out that the butler, the sheik, and Mr. Snively were all Jeanie’s father is magical disguise. He’s the King of Genies, and he just wanted his daughter to find love and marry a loveable beach bum with great hair and cool shades.
You know, pretty standard plot. Good movie, though, if I remember it right. There may have been snowboarding involved somewhere in there.
