Little Darlings (1980)

Directed by Ronald F. Maxwell. Starring Kristy McNichol, Tatum O’Neal, Krista Errickson, Matt Dillon, Armand Assante, Alexa Kenin, Abby Bluestone, Maggie Blye, Nicolas Coster, Troas Hayes, Cynthia Nixon, Mary Betten, Marianne Gordon. [R]

Two teenage girl rivals at summer camp make a wager with each other over which one will be able to lose their virginity first; McNichol meets a young stud (Dillon) from the camp across the lake, while O’Neal sets her sights on an adult camp counselor (Assante). Not as prurient or exploitative as it sounds, but that might be the problem, depending on what you’re looking for. The filmmakers can’t decide what kind of movie it should be, trading off between wild hijinks like food fights and stealing a condom vending machine and serious stabs at adolescent poignancy and regret—the tonal swings are abrupt rather than organic, and the script and direction aren’t good enough to make the elements mesh. They also make the bad decision of keeping the lead characters either apart from one another or trading snide insults for 90% of the runtime before deciding at the last minute to make it all about them discovering a lasting friendship with each other. The antagonistic strategy comes off as especially foolish because there’s already a bitchy “queen bee”-type (Errickson) among the female campers they could have teamed up against long before the end. Some video versions have different pop songs on the soundtrack due to licensing issues.

49/100