To "Shag" is to dance, apparently a common slang term in 1963 South Carolina, and "Shag: The Movie," as the press kit and ads say (though on the screen it's simply "Shag"), is about four teenage girls fresh out of high school who spend their last weekend together in nearby Myrtle Beach where the three B's are prevalent — boys, beer and bikinis.

Each of the foursome is quite different — one is an engaged and uptight brunette (Phoebe Cates), another is a wild and sexy blonde (Bridget Fonda), the third is a bit overweight and very shy (Annabeth Gish) and the fourth is plain and brainy.

They are stereotypes, to be sure, and during this party-down weekend, complete with "shag" contest climax, three will find love and one will be hurt. And if you can't guess which, maybe you need to take another look at "Where the Boys Are," the 1960 film about four girls who go to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for a weekend that is startlingly similar.

In fact, "Shag" is so similar to "Where the Boys Are" that one stops calling it coincidence about halfway through.

On the plus side, "Shag" is a fairly harmless teen comedy, as opposed to the "Porky's"-style sleaze that often permeates this genre, and it boasts some very charming performers — most notably Gish, Hannah and Fonda, though all seem too old to be playing 18-year-olds.

On the down side, director Zelda Barron, in true music video style, tends to cut too quickly from scenes instead of letting them play out, each moment seeming more like a calculated set piece than a natural evolution of the story. And the background '60s tunes are used to an overbearing and intrusive degree.

Still, in terms of teen movies, you could certainly do worse.

"Shag" is rated PG for profanity, vulgarity and implied sex.

-PAGE HANNAH, who plays the "plain Jane" character in "Shag," says she never gets advice from her more famous actress-sister Daryl Hannah because they're too busy talking about other things when they get together. "We don't even discuss the business."

And having a famous sister doesn't help in the audition process either. "I don't think it makes any difference," she said in a telephone interview from Denver, where she was on a promotional tour for the film. "We're never up for the same parts, we don't look at all alike — in fact, we couldn't even play sisters!"

Where her sister tends to be cast in glamorous roles, Page Hannah gets character parts — and that's fine with her.

"At first I was attracted to the role of Pudge (played by Annabeth Gish in the film). She's the most sympathetic character, the one most people fall in love with.

"But I knew that I could never physically play Pudge, and Luann (Hannah's character) seemed to fit (me) the best."

Hannah, who is 25, has played mostly teenage girls in movies, but "Shag" was attractive as a teen project that was a bit different, in its lack of exploitation elements and being told from the girls' point of view.

Hannah said she began doing commercials as a youngster in Chicago, and then when she was older she went to New York to study at New York University. In her sophomore year she was cast in the daytime TV soap opera "Search for Tomorrow" and has since made a number of movies, several of which have not been released.

Among her better-known roles were those in the films "Racing with the Moon" and "Creepshow 2" ("I got slimed in that one"), and she was a regular on the TV show "Fame."