Snack Shack

If you know me and/or have read my reviews before, you know I love a coming-of-age story. The best strike a balance between the comedy and the drama, weaving them together throughout the run time of the movie, one feeding into the other seamlessly. The Breakfast Club, Spontaneous, Turtles All The Way Down, Pretty In Pink, the list goes on and on and on. The ones that don't work are the ones that can never strike the balance. The comedy overwhelms the dramatic beating heart the movie requires, or the drama becomes maudlin and overwrought and makes the comedy feel anachronistic. Snack Shack's biggest (but not only) problem is that the creator decided to balance it in a literal sense. Of this two hour (!!!) coming of age movie, the comedy is exclusively in the first half, and the drama in the second. The first half is breezy and light and fun, highlighted the excellent chemistry of the two main leads and the idea of a summer of endless possibilities of girls, alcohol, and money await. Even if AJ and Moose are overly foul-mouthed and a bit abrasive at times (and even if it is impossible to believe them as 14-year-olds, neither looks a day younger than 17), the bond between them is natural and true. The budding flirtationship between AJ and his new neighbor, the worldly and sultry Brooke (playing a growing trope I've noticed of the impossibly cool older chick) is charming and sweet. The schemes the boys get up to in order to raise money to buy new Air Jordans or fund their aspiring microbrewery. It's heady and romanticized, sure, but it so successfully evokes the feelings of being young during the summer, even if it can't accurately replicate its time period. Seriously, nobody here looks like they're from 1991. I was there, I know. The leads are straight out of 2024. And then the movie hits the halfway mark, and the drama doesn't just take over, it suffocates the comedy with a pillow. If you have a functioning brain cell, you know what comes between them. Brooke is way more interested in AJ, who is quieter and timid, than she is Moose, who is more brash and loud and assertive, but Moose is more willing to make a move, driving a wedge between the boys. The acrimony between the two is authentic, sure, but because they're now actively working against each other, the movie's comedy is wiped out. Not even a hint. The last 50 minutes or so of the movie is drowning in bitterness and resentment and misunderstandings, and I was tired of it and ready for the reconciliation 15 minutes in, even though by this point, I'd decided Moose didn't deserve AJ as a friend. And then the movie forces the reconciliation with a manipulative rug-pull of a plot twist. Nothing is resolved between the two leads, nothing is ever discussed. It's just "well, this crappy thing happened, everything is okay", which is precisely the opposite of the point of a coming-of-age story. By definition, there is supposed to be growth, a maturing of the main character(s), and the twist doesn't allow this. It just forces the two together again because the movie can't end with them fighting. In fact, the movie goes out of its way to show things have gone back to normal in its final shots, meaning the movie ends where it starts, making the whole journey meaningless. There are other flaws that I've noted that contribute to bleeding out this movie's potential; its inability to capture the time period in any way besides not having cell phones and cars, the miscasting of the leads as 14 year olds, Brooke being a cliche, the excessively profane script (and I'm not some shrinking violet from profanity, but this is borders on Wolf Of Wall Street excess), and Moose being an unlikable prick. The movie leans on montages as shortcuts on way too many occasions. AJ and Moose are somehow able to get access to and engage in off-track betting and nobody checks their ID's, and somehow know how to brew beer at home. Brooke's age is never mentioned, but she's clearly older than the boys by at least a few years, since she can drive on her own, which makes it incredibly hard to believe she'd be interested in these immature dweebs that are a good three or four years below her. All of these little flaws would be enough to cancel out the movie's charms, but combined with the abrupt switch to drama and the tacky late-movie twist, kills Snack Shack for me. I want to like it. I love the authenticity of the friendships and the depiction of friction between friends because a third enters their orbit. I love the sense of adventure and anything-is-possible fantasy. But when there are so many other better coming-of-age movies -- even ones that do a third-act twist, like Honor Society, and manage to make it mean something without feeling like gross emotional puppetry -- there's just no reason I can see to endure this.