Films about Hawai`i are rare, and films in which Hawai`i-identified characters bring aloha to the U.S. mainland are even more rare. In Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner (1967), a happy mixed-race couple met and dated in Hawai`i, and then flies to San Francisco to receive approval for their proposed marriage, which came in the same year when the Supreme Court struck down the remaining antimiscegenation laws in the Southern states. In the Disney TV film Johnny Tsunami, a teenage surfer’s father, Pete Kapaha`ala (played by Yuji Okumoto), uproots the family for a career move from the North Shore of O`ahu to Skyline Academy, a snowy prep school town in Vermont. Pete is particularly pleased that in Vermont his son Johnny (played by Brandon Baker) will be away from the influence of his father and his son’s grandfather Johnny Tsunami (played by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa), a surfing champ. Directed by Steve Boyum, the story shows personal transformations of nearly all the characters as a result of the move, with aloha winning out. Before leaving Hawai`i, Johnny Tsunami assures his grandson that there will always be a place for him in his home. Unlike his experience in Hawai`i, however, Johnny encounters prejudice on the basis of class and race, which complicates his ability to get along with his fellow students. Instead of skiing with the preppies, called “Skys,” his familiarity with surfboarding attracts him to snowboarding, a sport played by public school kids, called “Urchins,” in the Vermont town where he is living. Skys look down on Urchins, and only Skys ski in one part of the mountain, while Urchins are restricted to an inferior part of the mountain for snowboarding. Johnny learns snowboarding from Sam (played by Lee Thompson Young), an African American newcomer to the town, and Johnny decides not to ski with the Skys. But Johnny has problems of adjustment, and Sam’s father is suddenly informed of orders to be reassigned by the military to a post in Iceland, so the two secretly hop on a military plane for Honolulu. After some long-missed surfing, Johnny Tsunami talks the two boys into returning to Vermont. Bret (played by Zach Bostrom), one of the Skys who wants his girlfriend Emily (played by Kirsten Storms) to stay away from Johnny, is rude to Johnny and initiates some scuffles, but Johnny refuses to be provoked into being confrontational, true to his Hawaiian heritage. Ultimately, Johnny challenges Brett to see who will come down the mountain first, one on skis, the other on a snowboard, and a condition of the victory is that snowboarders are free to use any of the slopes formerly reserved for skiers. After Johnny wins, Emily shows new respect for Johnny, and his father Pete realizes that he has been too strict with his son and disrespectful of his own father, Johnny Tsunami. Johnny decides to stay in Vermont, having brought about a new environment of mutual respect through nonconfrontational conflict resolution. Hawai`i filmviewers will notice some anachronisms, such as the casting of Pete by a light-skinned non-Hawaiian with an LA accent (whose Hawaiian name is not spelled with the required ` mark between the double “a”s). The story, written by Ann Knapp and Doug Sloan, appears to be the pilot of a TV series, but alas not much is expected of the film in Burbank after a week on the Disney Channel. Prospects of bringing aloha to end the obsessive class and race prejudice within the rest of the United States will await yet another excellent script. MH