She along with her friends (including a pre-Batgirl Yvonne Craig), are going on a “man hunt” at the beach. At its core, Gidget is a coming-of-age story about a young girl on the cusp of adulthood, learning about life and love during the pivotal summer between her junior and senior year of high school.Īt the start of Gidget, we meet 17-year old Francie. While some teen beach movies like Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello’s Beach Party movies can be pretty silly, formulaic, and ridiculous (though I enjoy them), others such as Gidget and Where the Boys Are (1960) strike a nice balance between silly and more serious topics. Gidget is the film that served as the catalyst for one of my personal favorite subgenres–the teen beach movie. If there was ever someone that I would associate with summer, it would be Sandra Dee as Francie “Gidget” Lawrence in Gidget.