Miracle Beach is a silly and superficial movie about a guy named Scotty (played by Dean Cameron) who goes home one day to find his girlfriend in bed with his boss. His boss then fires him. A moment later his landlord evicts him. So he's having a rough time. Meanwhile Jeannie (a genie), played by the adorable Ami Dolenz, is sent to Earth to check up on humans or something. She doesn't want to go, but she's told that if she messes up this assignment, she'll be forever locked in her bottle without any powers.
Well, Scotty is trying to sleep on a bench at the beach, and a homeless guy played by Pat Morita gives him a blanket and a bottle. Scotty wishes that he had a warm bed and a couple of babes. In the morning he wakes in a big bed with two babes - though that bed is on the beach. Right away he realizes he has a magic bottle, which he grabs off the bedside table (though he didn't wish for a bedside table) and takes to some mystic, played by the wonderful Vincent Schiavelli, to get the scoop.
That's one of the things that's good about this movie. It has an interesting supporting cast. In addition to Pat Morita and Vincent Schiavelli, there is Martin Mull as a movie producer, Dean Cain (Lois & Clark: The New Adventures Of Superman) as a volleyball player, and Alexis Arquette as Lars. Yes, Alexis Arquette when he was still a boy. I personally prefer him as a girl - he's much better looking as a girl.
But the movie is pretty shallow. Jeannie begins granting wishes left and right to Scotty and his two friends. So they end up with a giant beach-front home and they throw a big party for some beauty pageant contestants. There are some slightly amusing jokes involving the beauty contestants, like Miss Iraq and Miss Kuwait fighting, and Miss Bermuda Triangle disappearing. But Scotty is using all his wishes to make a hottie (played by Felicity Waterman) fall in love with him. This isn't someone he's been pining for for years or anything. It's just some woman he saw on the beach and decided she was the one for him.
Predictably, she's not a good person, and Jeannie falls in love with Scotty. But he doesn't see that Jeannie is the one for him. It's the same old thing we've seen a million times (done best in the film Some Kind Of Wonderful). So Jeannie tries to help him win the girl's love while falling in love with him herself. We get the routine montage where she's trying to make him more cultured - so they go to an art museum and an expensive restaurant and so on. Blah, blah, blah.
Even after cathing Dana with another guy, Scotty's interest in her doesn't wane. Which makes no sense. When he caught his girlfriend with another guy in the opening scene, he immediately broke up with her. So they established that's something he doesn't put up with.
All through the movie i kept wondering, Wait, why was Jeannie sent to Earth? What was her mission? Because if she fails, she'll be stuck in the bottle forever. Forever. That's huge. So she's something of a genie fuck-up. And she turns out to be favor the Clippers over the Celtics, so clearly she's a mess.
Oh, and when the beauty contest actually happens, both Dana and Jeannie enter it, which is lame and makes no sense whatsoever. Dana is Miss Miracle Beach, and Jeannie is Miss Fantasy Land. Guess who wins.
The movie does provide a good amount of nudity in the form of the beauty pageant contestants. And there are some funny jokes: the vanity plate on Scotty's car says, "WISH #10." But basically this movie is flat and pointless.
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