Age of Summer

source: Age of Summer

Literally dozens of coming of age movies set on Southern California beaches have been made since the surf culture took off in the 1960's. This one features a 13 year old boy nicknamed Minnesota (Percy Hynes White of The Gifted) who recently moved to LA and is training to be a junior life guard. He struggles to adapt to the rigors of the job and to be accepted amongst the slightly older, cooler locals also training. His fancy bike is stolen and he embarks on a quest to get it back they leads to some interesting if slightly weird plot twists. There was an annoying niggle with the part Diamaid Murtagh played as the Australian surf lifesaving coach. Having lived 2 years in, and travelled frequently to, Australia, I can tell you that no Australian uses their slang words jammed awkwardly back to back into the same sentence as the script writers manage with this character. It's as if they looked up a book of Aussie slang and inserted a slang word in at every opportunity. It made for a lampoonish dialogue to anyone familiar with Australians. This is most definitely a B grade movie with only average acting and not a strong plot line. Percy Hynes White does an OK job but comes across as a scrawny fish-out-of-water in the tough physical world of surf lifesaving as does his nerdy friend Woods (Jake Ryan). There is the obligatory awkward first relationship scenes that actually were quite well done. Compared to others in this genre, it's a very average movie.

I grew up in the 80s in a beach town so I feel strong nostalgia with the movie subject. I was disappointed in the overall story but liked individual scenes. I didn't see much of a story arc but rather a series of short stories as we follow the main character through a summer. I recognize that is how life operates but a movie usually has a main story. They seemed to borrow elements from Stand by me (not-cool kids, bullies, dead body, losing touch with friends.)

Looks like lots of people are too pretentious these days to admit that this is a beautiful coming-of-age film which deserves high ratings. I only caught one word that was not used in 1986--when one of the lifeguards gets excited about a beer score and squeals "Sick!" Keep your pretentions to yourself and your silly social media and when you review a film, be honest.

The story is about a group of american trainee life guards both teenage boys and girls. The main charcater is moves to new town with bmx and see's this girl who he believes is the most beautiful girl he has ever seen, baywatch this film is not. The recruits are learning their skills from a loud bullying coach from Australia, who seems to get off on writting messages on the backs of his weakest recruits. The main character Minnesota best friend peckerwood struggle to fit in with the older boys who seem to rule the roost. Minnersotas bike gets stollen and he's sent on wild goosechase meeting local hobo on his journey only to find nothing. The group also use him to steel a cannibis plant from local rockstar. After finding nothing in seach for bike he is given a skateboad by the hobo hippy called rock man because he some how lives on the sea defence rocks, only for a local thug claiming it's his board and is about to kick his ass, when he is rescued by the life guard members and becomes part of thier group and gets to join their group. After becoming part of the group ditches peckerwood and he gets to share in thier fun with access to secret stash of porno magazines and girls and joins in spin the bottle game only to be kissing another girl. Latter he and the girl he does like are drawn closer together when them and their coach is called out to a drownig person only to discover a dead local boy a kind of ( stand by me copy) turnning point and the girl he likes is upset by what she sees explains that her own brother died by drowning. The film has amazing shots of surfing,but lacks the grounding of a good story and was neither a comedy of a great comming of age story but a mixed up film and pointless. The missing bike is then included in end shot at bottom of ocean, why?

This is Bill Kiely's and David Harris' first feature film and I have been very well impressed by them. Because writing something fresh and entertaining over such an exploited material (first Summer, first Kiss, coming of Age...) requests talent. The movie is perfectly shot and very pleasant to watch. Characters are catching and the story unfolds nicely: I'm going to save it in my Film's Vault under the 'Comedy' and 'Romance' tags but with a purple dot, which is reserved to movies that I could possibly re-watch. A great honour... enjoy.

I usually like these coming of age summer films, but this was a strange one. The official movie description keeps saying 1986, yet 1983 is written on the chalk board and the newspaper headline in the movie. Who makes this mistake?? Characters are shallow. Are they bulliies? are they friends? Did he cruelly abandon his nerdy friend and why? Shooting the Hawaiian guys and the Rock God, omg!! My family couldn't watch it so I had to finish it alone.

This movie brought back memories of another movie I watched many moons ago. That movie was called "Lifeguard" and starred a young Sam Elliott. This movie was as enjoyable and as picturesque as that movie and gave me a nice feeling, reminiscing how I once as a teen found my way to fit in. Hard to find the words to describe that feeling we all felt as we were coming of age and turning that corner in life. This movie delivers the goods, great job pulling it off by actor Percy Hynes White!

A coming of ager. There are no big moments, but a series of small ones. It's the type of movie in which any of the cast or crew might move onto bigger and better things and you'll look back and say, "yeah, I saw that coming."

With such high ratings I was intrigued since I fall into that mid 80's group of teenagers. Unfortunately this was a childish effort which was neither funny nor emotional. The scenes didn't fit together as a symbiotic whole. I don't rate many movies but when I see movie makers blatantly hype up the reviews for the sake of ratings, I try to help out with some real reviews. This can be easily avoided.