BEFORE: Well, I won't know if I picked the "right" film for Valentine's Day today, but I guess we'll find out. This was a last-minute drop-in, because I wasn't sure if tomorrow's film was the best choice for the holiday. I guess it doesn't really matter, because I've devoted the whole month to romance and relationships, but I'm a stickler for getting things lined up right, according to my own self-imposed rules.
Wolfgang Novogratz again? Yep, it's a Novogratz take-over for Valentine's Day - he's my new favorite actor. He's been in just 6 films, according to the IMDB, and I'm watching four of them in a row. I don't know if anyone else has ever watched four Wolfgang Novogratz films in a row, I'm not sure if even Wolfgang Novogratz has. But somebody's got to, I suppose.
THE PLOT: Standing on the precipice of adulthood, a group of friends navigate new relationships, while reexamining others, during their final summer before college.
AFTER: This is a sneaky way to make a movie about high-school kids without spending a lot of time in a bunch of boring classrooms, or watching them studying or fretting over finals. Hey, if they were studying they wouldn't have time to go out on dates or drink at parties or play beer pong or whatever it is the kids do today. Just set the film in the summer AFTER senior year, so they've all got plenty of spare time, and then there's extra relationship drama because they all feel like their lives are about to change in college, plus there's extra incentive to party because they have to get serious in September or think about their careers and we all know that nobody parties at college, right? Wait, that's not right....
There are 5 or 6 separate but interlocking stories here - it's an ensemble piece. Wolfgang, if you're listening, you need to have a talk with your agent, because you played one of the main characters here, but your picture didn't make it to the POSTER? That's some bullshit - there's plenty of room, the montage got divided up into 16 rectangles, and they could have easily put Mr. Novogratz's picture in ONE of them. Some actors are on the poster TWICE even, and where's the love for Wolfgang Novogratz? Is he at least one of the people in that silhouette group photo? It's just not fair. OK, so his story isn't the MAIN story, but it's one of them! Hello? I guess Chad and Reece didn't make the poster either, but the baseball player did, and he's just a foil character! OK, Tyler Posey is apparently the star of "Teen Wolf", but let's see some respect for Foster in THIS movie, played by Wolfgang Novogratz.
Griffin and Phoebe have, I guess, the main story - Griffin is a nepo baby whose dad got him into Columbia, the business school, but secretly he wants to go to Berklee School of Music in Boston. He re-meets his old crush, Phoebe, at a party - they roller-skated together once as kids - and she's making a documentary about (wait for it...) high-school people in love who aren't sure what will happen to their relationships once college starts. Gee, that's a coincidence. But Phoebe won't go on a date with Griffin because she has to get the movie done before the end of the summer, since she's planning to attend NYU Film school and wants to have something to show there, or get into a film festival before that to raise some tuition. (I can confirm, the NYU expenses are enormous...). Griffin, since he's a music guy, has some experience with editing and sound design, so he helps her out with her film in order to get closer to her - and it works, because we know that spending time together is a solid way to test the waters of romance. (repeat "Love Tip" here, I already used that one so it doesn't count...)
A big monkey wrench gets thrown into the relationship when Griffin sees his father cheating on his mother, and the mystery woman turns out to be somebody very close to Phoebe. He doesn't tell her right off, so when the truth comes out, it drives a wedge between them, since it's a lie of omission. He probably just should have feigned ignorance here - pretended to find out when she did - but that's dishonest, too. Can this relationship last once they're both in college in different cities, also both knowing that his father had sex with her mother? That's just plain awkward.
Erin and Alec, on the other hand, break up right at the start of the summer - they'll also be in college in different cities, so this makes some sense (?), why wait until September, let's take a break now and then it will be easier to deal with. Only it's not - Alec is snatched up by the shallow, popular Paige and can't get loose, while Erin takes up with a rookie for the Cubs who fell into her lap while chasing a foul ball. Ricky the third baseman seems like quite a "catch", he doesn't chase MLB groupies, seems like a down-to-earth Texas guy who's still under his minor-league contract. But it turns out he's got a "complicated" relationship with his ex, so this pairing might also be doomed...
Foster is Alec's best friend, and they pour driveway asphalt together (Foster is also played by the inimitable Wolfgang Novogratz, accept no substitutes...). Foster's got a summer wishlist of women he'd like to date, but he finds that some of them are out of his league, others have issues and hangups of their own, and then there are those that think having a summer wishlist is very creepy, and they may not be wrong about that. Once word spreads about the list, his reputation is tarnished - so this tall, attractive senior who's secretly a virgin might never get laid, sure, there's always college but there's not one word said here about whether Foster's even going to college. Oh, if only there were experienced, divorced women in the suburban Chicago houses who had a thing for high-school seniors doing manual labor...
Audrey is Erin's best friend, and she gets a summer job working as a personal assistant for a wealthy woman, who uses her as a nanny to take her young daughter on auditions. Audrey's waiting to hear from her safety school, but over the summer gains enough confidence to realize that it doesn't matter, so when her safety school finally accepts her but puts her on academic probation, she takes a pass and chooses to do volunteer work instead - maybe college will still be in the cards, but down the road. You do you, Audrey, nothing wrong with taking some time to figure out what you want to do or who you want to date.
Chad and Reece's story isn't really connected to the others, they're two high-school losers who realize that they blew it during freshman year by being outed as nerds, now they can't date the popular girls because they're inexperienced, and there's no way to get experience with women because of their track record. But they stop into a bar on the way to a wedding and since they're wearing suits, they get mistaken for stockbrokers and they don't get carded. Surprisingly, they don't just drink until they're sick, and become regulars at the bar, as long as they wear the suits nobody knows that they work at a fro-yo shop. Halfway through the summer, they meet two women in the bar who work at an ad agency, and they start relationships based on their deception - what could possibly go wrong?
There is one more story, but if Chad and Reece's story seems disconnected from the others, the story of Mason, the skateboarder, is WAY more disconnected. Mason has one conversation with Griffin, then later we see him do a routine and win a spot on the national team, or something. Who the hell cares? The screenwriters just couldn't find a way to intertwine his story with the others, so it feels really tacked-on. Thankfully Mason was a black skateboarder and not a rapper, that would have been too stereotypical - still, this part of the story goes nowhere.
There are lots of celebrity-adjacent people in this cast - look, there's Kevin Bacon's daughter, and Adam Sandler's wife, and I'm betting that's Kelsey Grammer's daughter, or maybe it's just someone with the same last name, I can't really be bothered to look this up. Who am I kidding, of course I'm going to look all this up. And that girl with the promise ring must be Jim Belushi's daughter, she's got credits for being on his sitcom "According to Jim". The appearance of Jackie Sandler suggests that I could link to rom-coms like "Blended" and "The Wrong Missy", but I just don't have the time for those, maybe next year. There are only so many 2023 slots, after all.
Since there's a whole summer's worth of hook-ups, break-ups and make-ups here, this turned out to be a fine choice of films for Valentine's Day. It may not be seasonally appropriate, since technically we've got another whole month of winter to get through, but I can't worry about that. This is the second film this month where a plot point is that somebody hasn't seen "The Big Lebowski" before, but that's just a coincidence, when you start dating somebody of course you want to show them your favorite movies that they haven't seen. (The other movie was "Life Partners", two screenwriters just had the same idea...). OK, so there's todays "Love Tip" - if she won't watch "The Big Lebowski" with you, she's not worth it, just end things and move on.
Also starring K.J. Apa (last seen in "The Hate U Give"), Maia Mitchell, Jacob Latimore (last seen in "Like a Boss"), Norman Johnson Jr., Sosie Bacon (last seen in "Charlie Says"), Jacob McCarthy, Mario Revolori, Halston Sage (last seen in "Late Night"), Tyler Posey (last seen in "Yoga Hosers"), Gage Golightly, Nicole Forester (last seen in "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice"), Audrey Grace Marshall, Valerie Jane Parker, Sameera Rock, Ed Quinn, Gabrielle Anwar (last seen in "Body Snatchers"), Heidi Johanningmeier (last seen in "The Dilemma"), Jackie Sandler (last seen in "Hubie Halloween"), Greer Grammer (last seen in "Life Partners"), Brenna Sherman, Jamison Belushi, Dylan Doornbos Hayes (last seen in "No Strings Attached"), Amy Cates, Christopher Mele (last seen in "My Friend Dahmer"), Michael May, Jeffrey Grover (last seen in "I Feel Pretty"), Layla Cushman, Dionnae Maree Ford, Ryan Edward Hill, Julia Kelly, Brianna Burke, Gabriel Vigliotti with archive footage of Jeff Bridges (last seen in "Seventh Son"), John Goodman (last seen in "Once Upon a Time in Venice"), Molly Ringwald (last seen in "The Sparks Brothers").
RATING: 6 out of 10 longnecks in a bucket (just $10, that's a great deal, even though it's probably shitty beer...)
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