Summer of '42 (1971)

Good movie but grossly overrated

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

The acting in this movie is really good.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Funny how given the right musical score, narration, setting and actors...an adult having sex with a child is considered an 'awakening by some. Yes, I liked the movie years ago, but I know better now. Since the 70's, we better monitor such "splendor". The problem is that adults in the same situation can envision themselves in some kind of "Summer of 42", but all it is without the musical score and great feeling...is criminal activity.

A fantastic coming-of-age classic, I saw the first release in a theater in 1971 as a young teenager. It's now been resurrected thanks to TCM, where I saw it aired on Dec. 14, 2015. The film is as great as ever, and Dorothy + the haunting music still tug at my heart - even after 44 years! Jennifer O'Neill has an almost magical beauty that is simply beyond physical description. And like millions of other starry-eyed teen-age boys, Dorothy was absolutely my first love. One of my favorite movie scenes |of all time| is when she raises up on tiptoe to sweetly kiss Hermie's forehead. ANY boy who doesn't fall for Dorothy at exactly that moment will never really know love or romance.And even though I still watch it feeling that old familiar pain (and an unspoken kinship with Hermie): God Bless You Dorothy (and Jennifer) for helping me come of age with true love in my heart. I still have it.

In this 1971 Warner Brothers movie, set against the Nantucket Island backdrop of WWII, the nostalgia was great, strongly taking people back to the era of the early 40's. Nantucket was very appealing in this story, the coastal waters being very refreshing as well. As for the acting, Jennifer O'Neill portrayed so well the part of the lady with whom the young teenage boy became so taken. (Gary Grimes acted so well the part of the immature boy taken with her so strongly.) Jerry Houser was definitely an immature boy. But the storyline is not original. In their adolescent years, only a small number of boys do not find themselves fantasizing about some female they come upon and, as in this case, sometimes the women are too "old" for them; Grimes was a high school boy and O'Neill was somewhere in her middle 20's. In short, an adolescent boy meets an attractive older woman, he becomes strongly infatuated with her, and neither knows nor cares how the situation will resolve itself. The ending did and did not surprise me. To recapitulate, I was impressed with the nostalgia, the color and scenery were drawing, but the storyline was mediocre.

The last line of the film says it all... the teenage angst, the melancholia that the movie leaves behind, the longing for something better, more fulfilling, yes, even happiness. For me, it left the same feelings that the last episode of the "Wonder Years" TV show did -- life went on without the two who could have been the loves of their lives. "I was never to see her again. Nor was I ever to learn what became of her. We were different then. Kids were different. It took us longer to understand the things we felt. Life is made up of small comings and goings. And for everything we take with us, there is something that we leave behind. In the summer of '42, we raided the Coast Guard station four times, we saw five movies, and had nine days of rain. Benji broke his watch, Oscy gave up the harmonica, and in a very special way, I lost Hermie forever."