Billie

Rating:
Summary: semi ok
Review: This is good as something to waste a Saturday afternoon. Patti Duke plays an athlete. She listens to "the beat" which guides her in running. Since she's the top runner, the boys in the school are in shame. It's like a sitcom and all was okay till the end. It's not a good message.

Rating:
Summary: The Girl With the Beat
Review: This is the story of a 15-year-old girl who can outrun all the boys on the track team because she uses "the Beat," the rhythm of rock music in her head to help her run faster. She's invited to be on the boys' track team, to the consternation of the school principal and her father (reliable character actors Richard Deacon and Jim Backus)-especially embarrassing her father, who's running for mayor on what today would be thought of as a "male chauvinist ticket." Dad changes his tune when Billie becomes a track star, but his mayoral opponent has another family secret up his sleeve.

Of course at the end Billie takes the 60s way out and decides she'd rather be a girl than a track star, which infuriates many people, but the film was actually very daring for 1965 with its "everyone should do what they like" theme: no one actually ever coerces Billie to leave the team, not her envious team-mates, or her father, or the boy who wants to be her boyfriend-it's Billie's decision to stop running, not anyone else's.

This is just a nice pleasant rainy Saturday afternoon film with some great character actors, including Jane Greer, who plays Billie's mom who takes her husband with a grain of salt, the aforementioned Jim Backus, who wishes his little girl had been a boy (this leads to a very heart-rending scene where Dad refers to Billie as "son"), Susan Seaforth before she did DAYS OF OUR LIVES, a pre-THAT GIRL Ted Bessell and pre-BEWITCHED Dick Sargent, and Patty Duke as Billie, who actually comes off very natural as a tomboyish girl who feels out of place with everyone. (Her dyed blond hair is a fright, though; how did two brown-haired parents manage to have a blonde daughter anyway?) And of course lots of cool 60s dance scenes and clothes.

One point taken off for the DVD, which uses widescreen for the titles and pan and scan for the rest. It's good quality DVD, but the framing ruins several scenes. Someone must have had the original widescreen print somewhere; why not just transfer that?