One Crazy Summer

There were two types of comedies being made in the 80's: sex comedies and John Hughes movies. I know it's probably a bit reductive to say that, but those were the dominant forces in comedy for the youth. You either had intelligent, thought-provoking ruminations on what it meant to be young, or you were there to live vicariously through other characters who just wanted to see or touch some boobs. If for no other reason, One Crazy Summer stands out from those packs. It's rated PG, and that is almost exclusively for a few instances of cursing, and nothing about a "shit". There are no horny teenagers looking to get laid; in fact, the main character, Hoops (played by John Cusack) is actively looking for LOVE. There isn't a bare breast or buttock to be found here. But also, there isn't a moment of thoughtful introspection on the human condition or the weight of being young. This is as lightweight as a feather on the moon. One Crazy Summer is silly, deliberately unrealistic to the point of being cartoonish, almost bordering on a satire if it weren't so damned earnest in its approach on just trying to be fun. This ends up being both its biggest strength and its biggest weakness. I can't go back and watch the 80's sex comedies I loved 30 years ago without feeling like I should be put on a list, or at least have my taste in anything put into permanent question. And while I love movies like The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles, they also speak to a certain age that I no longer am, and require a specific mood to watch. One Crazy Summer says "let's just have some fun". There's silly sight gags, like Hoops' buddy lamenting about how his mom says he isn't responsible, and then the camera pans up to the roof of his car to show the dead Christmas tree still fastened to the top of it while it's mid-June. Or the two girls who actually experience the horror of their faces getting frozen because someone slapped their backs while they were making silly faces. OCS has a malleable relationship with reality. It wants to be as goofy as the cartoons Hoops likes to draw. I can't think of a single problematic moment like I can Porky's or Revenge Of The Nerds. It even manages to stuff in a "we gotta raise money to save the [thing]" AND a "we gotta win a competition to save the [thing]" storyline into the same movie. Back to back, in fact. One Crazy Summer does not want to be taken seriously. It wants to be what its title says it is, and I respect that. The problem with that is I also didn't care about anything happening in the movie, because I was too busy being caught off-guard by its zany humor. I'm not expecting Breakfast Club's harsh sincerity, but OCS comes off so whimsical, I never felt like the stakes had any gravity ... or that there were takes to begin with. Or that there was even much of a story, just a sequence of chronological events that sorta compromise a loose narrative structure. Hoops and his buddy (and his buddy's little sister and her incredibly beleaguered dog) go to Nantucket for the summer; Hoops meets a girl he likes who is losing her house; there's some evil developers who want her land; there's a guy (Curtis Armstrong) who has a bad relationship with his dad because he's not a hardened military man. All of these elements and a few more play out, but that's all they do, and they exist for the gags that occur from them. Which are funny gags, sure, but it leaves the movie's story feeling a bit empty. I remember seeing this box on the shelf as a kid, with the almost sinister sun looking down on the cast (and the sun wearing sunglasses, which .. .what?). It intrigued me. I wanted to see it because of that box. I'm happy I got to see it, and in a weird way, I'm happy I waited. I think 17 year old me would have been disappointed in the lack of nudity and crass humor. Despite the movie's inability to be anything more than a newspaper comic strip come to life, it's still amusing, and breezes by. It's exactly what it aims to be, and for that, I respect it. It won't be in anybody's "best comedies of the 80's" list, but it isn't trying to be. It's just trying to be a good time.