The Last Summer Synopsis: A group of young people in Chicago come together during the summer before they head off to college.
The Last Summer follows a group of high school graduates through their last few months of “freedom” before college. The movie has quite a few storylines going on. Griffin (KJ Apa) is set to start at Columbia University in the fall, thanks to some strings pulled by his dad.
He has a long-standing crush on Phoebe (Maia Mitchell), with whom he went to school before leaving to attend a prestigious prep school. Phoebe will attend NYU film school, and while she is attracted to Griffin, she claims she can’t hang out with him because she needs to focus solely on her upcoming film project for the entirety of the summer.
Alec (Jacob Latimore) and Erin (Halston Sage) have been dating for two years but decide to break up to avoid the “long death march” to August, when they would have broken up anyway due to attending two different colleges. Alec almost immediately begins dating the pretty but shallow “Party” Paige (Gage Golightly), and Erin is asked out by a Major League baseball player named Ricky Santos (Tyler Posey).
Sprinkle in a couple of nerds who work at a yogurt shop while asking themselves when it was they became uncool (apparently, reading Harry Potter at a football game is the ultimate no-no in high school) and a cute but dumb jock character with nothing but sex on his mind (and a list of ladies to get it from). You’ve got a smĂśrgĂĽsbord of teen-movie stereotypes.
I do love coming-of-age movies. I also grew up loving teen to adulthood movies like St. Elmo’s Fire. I will always give movies like The Last Summer a shot, and I will always hope I like them. Netflix is marketing The Last Summer as The Perks of Being a Wallflower meets Can’t Hardly Wait, both iconic teen films, and I disagree with the marketing sentiment altogether. Yes, The Last Summer uses several elements from these movies and many others, but they are not executed as well as the movies that came before, making The Last Summer feel like nothing more than a generic rehash.
The movie’s primary focus is Griffin and Phoebe’s blossoming romance and the tried and true story of parental infidelity to tear them apart, but then it randomly jumps around to the other storylines, of which there are too many. I’ve never minded movies that have more than one running plot. All I ask is that these stories at least be exciting and worth the distraction. Unfortunately, the subplots here are unoriginal and rather dull.
The two token nerds, Reece (Mario Revolori) and Chad (Jacob McCarthy), wear suits into a bar one afternoon and are mistaken for stock traders. This gag continues throughout the movie until they can fool two beautiful women into taking them home for the evening. Then there is Foster’s (Wolfgang Novogratz) typical bro journey to get laid by a gaggle of beautiful girls, and really, who cares? Foster is Stifler-lite, delusional, and oblivious that his one-track mind is entirely off-putting. It makes his story’s payoff even more baffling and irritating.
In terms of Alec and Erin rebounding from the end of their two-year relationship, Alec’s new girlfriend Paige is every one-dimensional, shallow rich girl you’ve ever seen on screen, and Ricky Santos is completely devoid of any real personality beyond name-dropping his new endorsements and complaining about his truck. Will Alec and Erin wake up and realize they should have enjoyed their last few months of freedom together rather than with pointless flings? Take a guess!
Erin’s friend Audrey (Sosie Bacon) becomes an assistant to a wealthy single mom who wanted to be an actress but is now pushing those aspirations on her young daughter, Lilah (Audrey Grace Marshall). Audrey is unsure what she wants to do with her life now, with adulthood looming and colleges rejecting her. Lilah isn’t so sure she wants to be the star her mother is pressuring her to become. Is there any doubt that Audrey and Lilah will walk away from the summer having taught each other some important life lessons?
I wish I had something positive to say. The acting was so-so, and the soundtrack was forgettable. I’m not sure there was one original concept to be had and not one character interesting enough to save what little promise there might have been.
What more can be said about bland, upper-class teens that haven’t been said already? Yes, they have nice homes, expensive wardrobes, and montages of various parties with abs and red Solo cups aplenty. But I’ve seen this movie before, many times, with better scripts and some more depth. The Last Summer is uneven and empty, crammed with way too many characters and way too many pointless storylines. Maybe if Bindley had focused on two or three storylines instead of seven, there would have been time for actual character development, and I could have come out of this movie actually caring about the ending.
It’s so rare to find a movie that truly emulates what high school is like for teenagers and where they may or may not go once it’s over. Add The Last Summer to the long list of failures.
Watched: 05/03/2019
Notable Song: Let’s Hurt Tonight by OneRepublic
