tek's rating: ¾

Rip Girls, on Disney Channel
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This came out in 2000. I don't remember when I first saw it, but by the time I watched it again in 2022 to write a review, I didn't remember anything about it. I thought it was decent, but not great. I'm definitely glad to have seen it again, but I probably won't remember it that well, even after this second viewing.

So, this 13-year-old girl from Chicago named Sydney Miller (Camilla Belle), who likes taking pictures, goes to Hawaii for a couple of weeks, because she inherited a plantation called Makai from her great aunt. She's accompanied by her father, Ben, and stepmother, Elizabeth. They meet with a lawyer named Bo (Keone Young), who seems hesitant about the possibility of the Millers selling the property to people who want to develop a resort there. Meanwhile, Sydney befriends a local girl named Gia, as well as a boy named Kona (on whom she develops a crush, which is reciprocated). She also gets to know Gia's mother, Malia, who was a friend of Sydney's late mother, who was a surfer. Sydney herself begins learning to surf with Gia and her friends, despite her father wanting her to stay away from the ocean, because... well, he doesn't really talk about it, but it's pretty obvious that surfing was how her mother died. Anyway... Sydney will have to make a big decision about whether or not to sell the property, which could get her family money they apparently need, but it would also spoil her new friends' whole way of life.

I guess that's all I want to reveal of the plot. I wish I could think of more to say about, you know, how I felt about the movie. But I can't. It was just pretty darn okay.


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