I found a set of DVD at my public library, it has the three first Gidget movies. The first one, with Sandra Dee, will always be the favorite for most of us. The ones that followed loosely bridged off that first one with different actresses playing Gidget, but James Darren the constant as Moondoggie.
This movie starts on the same beach we are familiar with in California but from that quick start most of it is set in Hawaii, and most of it was filmed in New Zealand.
Deborah Walley is Gidget this time and she is fine. The story includes various teen romances and mix-ups, there is a bit of surfing but not much. And it also includes some drama with Gidget's parents, within the context of a comedy movie.
I enjoyed seeing Carl Reiner playing Gidget's dad, it was hard to grasp that he was still in his late 30s when this movie was made. And a newcomer, Michael Callan as a competing love interest. His biography says he had ambitions of a career similar to Gene Kelly's and in fact has a decent dream-sequence production number where he does a good dance routine. But that time had already started to pass and we can also see he was just a shadow of Kelly's screen presence.
Not that good of a movie, probably my least favorite of the Gidget movies. The vast middle of it was more tedious than entertaining.