Beach Girls (2005) [UR] ***

Jack Kilvert (Rob Lowe) is a Boston attorney. He and his sixteen-year-old daughter Nell (Chelsea Hobbs) are grieving after the loss of Emma (his wife and Nell's mother) nearly a year earlier in a tragic automobile accident. Jack thinks his sister Maddie (Katherine Ashby) was at fault because she was driving the car and she's an alcoholic; but there's a lot he doesn't know about Emma and their marriage.

As part of the healing process Jack has leased a summer home in Hubbard's Point, Connecticut, a picturesque Long Island Sound beach community where he had grown up, and where Emma, Maddie and their close friend artist/writer Stevie Moore (Julia Ormond) had bonded as beach girls twenty years earlier. Jack and Nell's return also gives Nell an opportunity to learn more about her mother's past, by getting to know Stevie, who is a year-round resident of Hubbard's Point. During the summer, Nell also befriends two Hubbard's Point girls, Clare (Kristin Adams) and Skye (Kristen Hager), and the three girls form a new generation of beach girls.

Based on the novel Beach Girls (Hubbard's Point) by Luanne Rice, Beach Girls is a Lifetime TV miniseries. The main story thread is the growth process through which Jack learns the truth about Emma, and strengthens his relationships with Maddie and Stevie. There are several sub-plots involving youthful sexual awakening, a developer's planned highway through the village, and mother-daughter miscommunication. The message of Beach Girls is that the friendships we form as adolescents can be stronger and more enduring than the relationships we form as adults; that they can sustain and nurture us for our entire lives; and that these friendships are developed through trust, open communication and forgiveness. If you enjoy summertime teen girl films like The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants and its sequel, you'll definitely want to see Beach Girls. 

Label: drama   
Internet Movie Database   
Metacritic NA/100   
Tomatometer (critics=NA, viewers=65)