There are only three things that I can say complimentary about Catalina Caper, one was that it offered some nice scenery of Catalina beach and the beach city of Avalon, Little Richard sang a number and Tommy Kirk got a needed paycheck. After his exile from Disney Studios and mainstream Hollywood, he probably needed the work and as we know he was taking work from wherever.
I'm sure it was the tourist board of Catalina Island that commissioned Catalina Caper, just make lots of nice cinematography of our island and then put some kind of story on it. Kirk plays a kid from Arizona where they don't have beaches, he's a self described 'desert rat' and he's there with buddy Peter Duryea to learn the beach scene.
Little does he know that he gets himself innocently involved in the stealing of an ancient Chinese scroll from the Ming dynasty by the parents of one of the beach kids. Despite his parentage the kid is honest and the beach gang unite to return the scroll and save the parents from jail. It's all frighteningly dumb.
A few laughs from Robert Donner who rivals some of the great slapstick comedians of the day in number of pratfalls he takes as an inept insurance investigator. The songs which are just grafted into the film are all right. Kirk and Ulla Stromstedt are clearly too old for the parts they play.
Catalina is a beautiful place from which dumb stories are located.
I'm sure it was the tourist board of Catalina Island that commissioned Catalina Caper, just make lots of nice cinematography of our island and then put some kind of story on it. Kirk plays a kid from Arizona where they don't have beaches, he's a self described 'desert rat' and he's there with buddy Peter Duryea to learn the beach scene.
Little does he know that he gets himself innocently involved in the stealing of an ancient Chinese scroll from the Ming dynasty by the parents of one of the beach kids. Despite his parentage the kid is honest and the beach gang unite to return the scroll and save the parents from jail. It's all frighteningly dumb.
A few laughs from Robert Donner who rivals some of the great slapstick comedians of the day in number of pratfalls he takes as an inept insurance investigator. The songs which are just grafted into the film are all right. Kirk and Ulla Stromstedt are clearly too old for the parts they play.
Catalina is a beautiful place from which dumb stories are located.