The Pitch:
What if American Pie 2 was more melodramatic?
We all have types of movies that we'll happily watch
even if they are bad. I know I have several. Movies that are all practically
the same but the minute differences are enough to satisfy us. We also tend to
be a little blind to this fact, thinking other people are crazy for not seeing
the diversity of these stories. To me, all anime is the same damn thing every
time. But, the people with a higher tolerance for anime see all the different
shades and variations in the different stories. I'm sure someone could school
me on the intricacies of Steven Segal or Jean Claude Van Damme action movies of
the 90s or raunchy 80s comedies even though they are indistinguishable to my
eye. I'm most susceptible to the high school coming of age story. I'm not sure
why, but I could watch them all and never get tired of them. Maybe I just like
watching pretty, young people. Maybe I'm an easy victim of nostalgia. I think a
lot of it comes down to the fact that they are easy. I know all the plots and
twists. They characters all fit types, even when they are trying not to. I
enjoy these movies for the same reason I keep playing the same
real-time-strategy video games I've beat a dozen times rather than pickung up
new games. My ideal power-down activity is about 95% muscle-memory and 5%
actively thinking. Watching The Last Summer requires little processing
power from my brain, and the tropes that bother other people don't even
register with me.
The Last Summer is nothing special. In a year, I won't be able to tell is
apart from, say, Good Kids. That's the one with Zoey Deutch, I think.
It's your typical high school ensemble movie though. There isn't really an
A-plot. There's just a bunch of B-stories that occasionally intersect. There's
the couple who break up and both start dating other people only to realize the
error of their ways. One teen becomes a nanny. There's the nerds who somehow
become regulars at a bar. And, of course, the artistic girl who's also gorgeous
who tells herself she's not going to date anyone this summer (Spoiler alert:
she does!). I like that I could write most of this movie before watching a
second of it.
I only recognized a few people from the cast. Maia
Mitchell was excellent in Never Goin' Back last year and brings that
same charm to a much less interesting role in this. I guess I've seen Halston
Sage in a bunch of things, but I couldn't tell you what without her IMDB page
pulled up. She's also charming. I liked the nerd characters - one is also in A.P.
Bio and the other is the brother of the kid from The Grand Budapest
Hotel and the new Spider-Man movies, which I didn't need IMDB to
figure out). Mostly, it's a cast of people I expect to see in CW and Freeform
shows for the next decade, and maybe one will graduate to an impressive movie
career.
With a softer touch, I would've liked this movie a
lot more. For example, there's a scene where a guy is asking Maia Mitchell on a
date via a text conversation. It starts as a wordless scene in which we only
see the guy on a train and the text of the chat. It's a great little scene,
capturing the excitement of seeing the "..." and the dismay when the
other person takes too long to respond. Then, at the end, when he secures the
date, the guy announces to the train that she said yes (Note: He hasn't been
talking to anyone on the train before then). There's no need for that. The
actor's face made his excitement clear enough. Having him announce it to
strangers on a train serves as a blunt and unnecessary reminder that this is a
movie world. This movie does stuff like that a lot, and it's disappointing.
With a little more trust in the audience and the performances, this could've
been a much better forgettable high school movie.
The Last Summer is nowhere near the pantheon-level movies of its ilk - Fast
Times, Dazed and Confused, Clueless. It's far from my
personal top tier - Me & Earl & The Dying Girl, The Edge of
Seventeen. It has no hope of being considered with the modern classics - Lady
Bird, Mean Girls, Easy A. But, being somewhere on the list
around Can't Hardly Wait and Dope isn't so bad. OK, maybe it's
below those too...Shut up. I still liked it for what it is.
Fuck it!
Verdict: Weakly Recommend
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