PHAT BEACH

PHAT BEACH Jermaine Hopkins, Brian Hooks (1996, LIVE, R, priced for rental) In most beach movies, the plot is as irrelevant as bikini strings. This T&A fest, which briefly played in theaters, puts a little more weight on its script: Obese sad sack Benny King (Hopkins), a frustrated poet (and virgin), suffers such a maudlin cavalcade of humiliations while chasing bikinied bunnies that viewers are almost drawn in -- as by a car accident. Yet, despite hyping a cameo by Coolio on its cover and seeming to value King's sappy paeans to true love, Phat Beach only pretends to be anything other than a moving centerfold. Ultimately, the flick reaches no deeper than the omnipresent cleavage that serves as the real -- and eventually dull -- star. C-