Summerhood (2008)

Brilliant and touching

Am I Missing Something?

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

Summerhood (2008): Dir: Jacob Medjuck, Tony Dean Smith / Cast: Scott Beaudin, Raquel Alessi, Jesse Cammacho, Joe Flaherty, Christopher McDonald: Independent summer teen camp comedy that reflects on those innocent days of yesteryear where the door is open just a crack for the next phase of life. Unfortunately this lacks the memorable characters and funny situations that rendered Meatballs such a popular summer comedy. The big issue that directors Jacob Medjuck and Tony Dean Smith heave at us is the romantic hints between underage characters. In reflection, most of us view summer camp at the age of these characters as being anything but parading after girls. Meatballs did this but it was between the counselors and their social hyjinks. It has the total opposite affect here and comes off as creepy as oppose to funny. It also doesn't help that none of these characters are remotely memorable. Even the presence of Joe Flaherty and Christopher McDonald cannot help breath new life into tired retreads. The kids have about as much life as the average store window mannequin. It fails to teach anything about growing up whereas Meatballs bore humour from experience. What we have here looks less impressive than your neighbor's vacation slides. Best advice is to watch Meatballs and try to lose the ugly memory of this drab film ever being in existence. Score: 1 / 10

Canadian with rich dad and big aspirations writes, produces, directs, and stars in a Meatballs camp-hi-jinx derivative with himself in the cool counselor, i.e., Bill Murray, role. A bit raunchier and pottier-mouther than Meatballs and some of the sound quality is pretty amateur; some of the kids' lines are pretty muffled. Great soundtrack and narration by John Cusack save it from a lower rating.Flaherty is hapless camp director and McDonald plays well his comic villain role a la Shooter McGavin. Tripper and Rudy, ah, I mean, Careless and Fetus get their respective girls. Cute but derivative. Still better than Meatballs 2, et seq.

Not one funny scene and yet every scene tries to be funny! This movie is a choppy collection of 'kids at summer camp misbehaving' and trying to be lovable rapscallions but it fails at every turn.The plot is questionable due to it's constant meandering between the love interest with that too tall girl and 'the boys shenanigans' .... dead end!The counselors are stoned or just lost in how to portray their character. Then the four daughters ....really? I thought this was a kids movie. Don't waste your money - !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I saw this at the Waterfront Film Festival in Saugatuck, Michigan.What a wonderful film, so much fun and entertaining. It's the basic story of children at a summer camp and how they spend their time there. But the cast is just so great, it's obvious everyone was having a blast making it.The film stars Lucian Masel as Fetus, a little kid at camp who has a crush on Sundae (Reva Timbers) one of the girls there. It focuses on Fetus and the rest of the kids from his cabin as they go through crazy antics and adventures and trying to avoid getting caught by the camp Assistant Director (Christopher McDonald in a great performance).There were just so many fun moments throughout this film, all of the characters were great, with their hysterical names and personalities (Fetus, Reckless, Careless, Grandpa, The Raincoat Kid). And the dialogue sounds like what the kids would actually say and not like it was just written for them. Oh, and the soundtrack was just perfect, great uses of songs and perfectly placed during each of the scenes.This film was one of the best at the festival. Actor Scott Beaudin who played Reckless was at the screening for a Q&A and he told some nice stories about the making of the film and how all of the cast had a great time working on it. I hope to see many of these young actors in future projects.Narrated by John Cusack, Summerhood is an extremely entertaining comedy that's another wonderful addition to the summer camp comedies. Everyone should check this film out.