one crazy summer [1986]

 

now this is a goofball movie!  want plot?  want sense?  want a reasonable likeness to reality?  look for them in some other film!  for this flick is one of my favorite summer movies because it is like an aimless hot summer day when you have nothing to do but manage to have one stupid adventure after another in the company of your friends &, if you are very lucky, either boyfriend or girlfriend.  this is the second movie penned & directed by savage steve holland.  his first film, better off dead [1985] also featured a very charming john cusack as a young everyman slacker in search of love. 

holland has a knack for putting in zany details in his films, such as a mom in holland's first feature cooking dinner in an otherwise ordinary late-20th C middle-class kitchen but out of the stew pot are a few waving tentacles.  summer is peppered with these dadaist details.  part of the delights of watching this movie is watching the backgrounds of the frames to see what weirdness is unfolding before our eyes. 

the macguffin of a plot is cusack plays a sadsack named hoops who is a cartoonist & the hapless beast hoops repeatedly draws is a rhino who just can't catch a break in love or in life.  oh yeah, his name, hoops, is a bit of a slight-of-hand of the screenplay because with a name like that you'd expect hoops to be an excellent basketball player.  well then, hoops & friend graduate from Generic High School.  his friend, george calamari, played by joel murray, invites hoops to spend the summer with him, his little sister & her dog who is always wearing a cone, at his grandma's house in nantucket.  

off they go!  on the way the group meets the gorgeous cassandra, played by demi moore, a musician who found a summertime gig at a bar on the island.  actually, hoops rescue her from the silliest looking biker gang one could ever conjure up in your loopiest of fever dreams.  why was the gang after cassandra?  she stole their money!  but later it is explained why she needed the bikers', or perhaps they stole it from her, money.  hoops, of course, falls head over heels for cassandra.  

the wonderful billie bird plays grandma calamari.  her house is killer!  right on the water.  she even makes dinner for hoops & her grandkids & only charges a fair restaurant price for her food & service!  then there is bobcat goldthwait as tow truck driver & mechanic, egg stork, & tom villard as his brother, clay.  it takes some fortitude to sit thru the entire runtime of a movie & listen to goldthwait's vocal ticks that are very much part of his comic persona.  his comedy is like eating salt licorice.  a little goes a long way & the aftertaste lingers.  it takes training!  my stamina is up to speed i think i can now sit thru a roster of bobcat goldthwait films.  

the reason cassandra needs money, about a grand, in a week, is because the bank will foreclose on her family home.  the evil developer, aguilla beckerstead, played by mark metcalf, wants cassandra's house, & other properties so he can build a resort cum condo unit.  will he succeed?  i'm on pins & needles!  oh, & there is an annual regatta that is important for the beckerstead, pere et fils, the obnoxious, teddy, played by matt mulhern, to win.  hoops & co., including the stork bros., george, ack-ack raymond, played by curtis armstrong, decide to refurnish their own boat to race against the beckersteads.  

& so it goes down to the wire.  i would be remiss to not note that holland cast a terrific group of funny actors in this movie.  such as the wonderful taylor negron, rich little, rich hall et al.  another little detail i enjoyed were the scenes at the local drive-in theater with the old-fashioned speakers that were placed on the window of your car.  summer is too brief a time.  but sometimes it feels like a lifetime.  & sometimes you just wanna watch a movie that has that carefree, madcap, goofy summer feel.  when anything is possible & love is felt on the pulse of a warm breeze.  when summer can be, in the best ways possible, crazy.