Garry Marshall certainly had a feel for the mood and atmosphere of New York in the Kennedy years in directing The Flamingo Kid. I knew someone who practically lived at the Brighton Beach Baths in Brooklyn growing up and who played a mean competitive paddle tennis.Matt Dillon is our hero protagonist at the Long Island summer beach club where the boys live for the tips. But the guests here tip like Frank Sinatra, in fact some of them are paying their way through college. They're rich and like to thrown their money around. Just have your hand out and catch as a cabana boy.Dillon is a working class kid with parents Hector Elizondo and Jessica Walter and dad's a working guy all his life and like every other parent hopes his kid will do better than being a plumber. Funny thing is that plumbers do very well and the work is steady.But Dillon falls under the influence of charismatic car dealer Richard Crenna who eschews the value of education. He's Donald Trump with a little more polish. He also has a nice side income in some high stakes gin rummy games with some regulars at the cabana.Essentially Dillon has to make a choice and get an education or go to work as Crenna's dealership. For all their smoothness it would probably astound Crenna at how much he does not know, but he probably wouldn't care.Let's say Crenna is not quite the hero Dillon first thinks he is. Matt does a lot of growing up at that cabana that summer.The Flamingo Kid is an acting duel between Dillon and Crenna. Dillon strikes a lot of emotions as the tough kid from Brooklyn who makes the right moves in the end. Crenna does one of the best performances in his career as a charming, but sneaky and potentially dangerous if the conflict was more than a gin rummy game.Garry Marshall gives us a winner with The Flamingo Kid.

Good movie, worth owning, part for the time it represents, and part because of all the good acting (understated and funny). Richard Crenna plays a great pompous jerk (are we sure he's acting?) Hector Elizondo plays one of his best parts ever as the DAD ("Now he knows Kings!"), and Gretzky's wife even does a half decent job. Fisher Stevens and Bronson Pinchot play good supporting roles as well. Matt Dillon does a great job as a kid who's enamored with Crenna's BS. (One actress who is hot as hell is Carole Davis, who plays Crenna's daughter, and who I am almost positive was a Penthouse Pet at one time. She was also in "Mannequin" and "Shrimp on the Barbie". Hotter than Gretzky's wife).......Anyway, good lines, good script, good ending, good movie.

Great movie. Hopefully it will be made available on DVD soon. Matt Dillon was great as well as Richard Crenna. The characters are amazingly mundane, yet still hilarious. There are so many great lines to be taken from this movie. See it again and again and you will be quoting it for years.

This is a wonderfully entertaining story chock full of lessons in life. The lessons, are pretty universal and most have to be learned the hard way. The "kid", played by Matt Dillon, enters the world of the well-to-do, more well to do than him anyway. He is from a blue-collar neighborhood in 1963 Brooklyn. His entry??? Employment at the "El Flamingo", an upper-middle class beach club. Richard Crenna, wonderful as the slick, gin rummy playing member, befriends the kid. The lessons of the world revolve around the "big" gin rummy game. Lots of laughs, lots of fun, and Janet Jones make this movie a must see. I've seen it dozens of times myself, and will probably watch it dozens more.One more thing. A special mention to Jessica Walter. She gave one of the most believe-able performances I've ever seen. I HATED HER.