Staten Island Summer (2015)

Perfect cast and a good story

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

Staten Island Summer finds recent high school graduates Graham Phillips and Zack Pearlman are on a quest that summer. Both are lifeguards at the Great Kills Beach Club there and both want to get themselves laid before they leave for college and whatever other future they might have. For Phillips it's the best kind of future, it's Harvard. But first pleasure before business.They also want to have one big blowout of a party at the club, but their boss Michael Patrick O'Brien is determined not to have one there. The kids and most of the adults think O'Brien is an idiot, still he's the boss.Nothing to out of the ordinary for the usual teen sex comedy. In fact the film is shot in Staten Island and at the Great Kills Beach Club. When you come right down to it, it's one long commercial for the club.

It started out quite good. The first ten minutes in, I was very interested. But then it just got lazy...the writing was sloppy and careless. The acting wasn't very good. And the plot seemed like a worse version of Superbad. I'm 21 years old, and I'm basically the target audience for a movie like this. I've enjoyed almost every other summer comedy about partying, but this one was dragged out, corny, and just overall a bad movie. Give me my 2 hours back please...? I don't recommend it.PS- Jim Gaffigan was hilarious.PPS- The main character was not...at all.

I have lived on Staten Island for over 40 years and am sick of Staten Island being depicted in this way. I couldn't even watch more than the first 15 minutes before turning it off. First of all the pool is supposed to be in Great Kills at their club which is expensive and maybe filled with some dunces but not the type of dunces depicted. That area is high income white and those people would not like this stereo type which does fit a great number of Staten Islanders and New Jersey types. The types depicted are lower income blue collar workers and even though Great Kills has some of the latter the club prides itself on being above all that and is much too expensive for me or my family to have ever attended. Second what is funny about a bunch of clueless teens spending their aimless summers trying to get laid and have fun preening muscles at idiot girls and cannon balling into the pool in totally irresponsible fashion. (Even at our city pool which is lovely this behavior is not tolerated.) It's all been done before and better. The days of Animal House being amusing are over. There are tons of other types both here and in New Jersey (a state of which I as a New Yorker do not have a special fondness) who have complex intelligent lives. If this was even slightly amusing I might have continue to watch but other than showing that some of the neighborhoods and beach are often overlooked in their beauty I was completely repelled. I live on the opposite shore depicted in the film (North Shore) but I am sure that those on the South Shore might also not find this film to their taste.

First of all, if you go into this movie expecting it to be an episode of Jersey Shore, you will be disappointed. Even though Staten Island has a reputation of meat heads fist pumping everywhere, it's not an accurate representation of Staten Island. I applaud the creators of this movie who finally show Staten Island in the correct light. The stereotypes of this NYC borough do exist in this movie but are in the outer fringes of the storyline, just as they are in the actual Staten Island.That being said, the movie is enjoyable, but really not a memorable coming of age comedy. The story provides noting really new, and actually aside from Gina Gershon and Vincent Pastores' stereotypical Italian suburban characters. This story could have taken place in any middle class neighborhood across the United states.Again, the creators should be applauded for showing Staten Island in its true form. If you like coming of age stories, there's enough here to make it enjoyable. It's not overly funny or dramatic and the script isn't strong, but you will probably watch it and move on with your life. If you saw "the way way back" you will notice huge contrasts between a strong showing as that one is and a mediocre entry like this one.