Staten Island Summer (2015)

Very Cool!!!

Simply A Masterpiece

It's no definitive masterpiece but it's damn close.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

Staten Island Summer is a very generic teen movie. It has a cheesy plot line, a very specific audience that will enjoy it, and some humor inserted into it that some find funny, while others hate it.It is a movie that, like nearly every other teen movie, has a character battling through his late teens. Women, sex, and friendships are all a huge part of the movie.Regardless of all previously mentioned, I still did not find Staten Island Summer to be a bad movie. It had its moments. There were a lot of foreseeable things that you might notice very early on in the movie, but you still have some things that you might not expect. There are a couple of genuinely funny scenes, although a couple of them own a rather blunt taste of humor that at least did not make me really laugh.For fans of teen movies, Staten Island Summer is a good choice, although there are many better. It is best described as a rather lame and not as funny version of American Pie, but some might really enjoy the humor - and some might actually find the plot to be good.

To paraphrase another reviewer and a line from the movie's opening narration, it's as if Caddyshack and Superbad had a love child. A very funny love child...As you watch this movie, it's easy to pick out influences from other flicks. Jonah Hill type? Check. Michael Cera type? Check, but let's go with black hair so it's not obvious. And so it goes, even including a mumbling grounds-keeper a la Caddyshack. Mind you, these are not necessarily bad things. Considering I laughed myself silly quite a few times, I won't complain. This movie was a refreshing change from the standard fare of late. It's just a silly comedy with barely enough plot to move from scene to scene. It's not a dreary underdog saga set in a dystopian future. It's not another overwrought superhero movie with a 45 minute CGI battle scene to fill up the running time once the creators ran out of ideas. And most thankfully, it's not an angst-filled critique of relationships. It's just a funny story. I wish there were more movies like this one. The many supporting characters were great fun. Kate Walsh and Jim Gaffigan played their parent roles to deadpan perfection. The kid from Bad Grandpa played a great straight man (straight kid?) to the totally inappropriate influences of Fred Armisen. Don't expect too much, but do sit back and enjoy a few belly laughs. And be thankful not everybody in Hollywood has given up on making light-hearted comedies.

Maureen Donohue is really lucky she stopped watching after 15 minutes. This is probably the worst teen comedy I've ever seen. It's filled with ridiculous plot devices that are just plain stupid without any redeeming humor, such as the handyman using jet fuel to destroy a hornet's nest. Another unfortunate aspect is that it may encourage dangerously irresponsible behavior among teenagers who watch it and think it reflects how a teenager behaves to be considered cool or to attract the opposite sex. But the movie isn't just stupid and not very funny. It's also quite offensive. The scene with the ice cream truck driver swearing vociferously in front of a group of small children was completely unnecessary. It did not advance the story in any way, and if this were happening in real life, somebody would be calling the police. The most offensive aspect of the movie is reserved for it's implication that it's normal behavior for a boy in the third grade to dry hump whatever is handy while fantasizing about diddling his babysitter. Who is the lame-brained sicko who wrote the script, I wondered. Was I ever shocked to discover it's the head writer for SNL, Colin Jost, who has won numerous awards. He seems to be a few bricks short of a load when it comes to sexual intelligence, and I'm referring to the overall depiction of boy-girl relations in the movie, not just the particular scene I mentioned. After seeing the movie, I wasn't surprised to discover that he names Norm McDonald as a primary influence for his stint on Weekend Update. McDonald was by far the worst ever on Weekend Update in the history of the show, at least up to Seth Myers (haven't seen it since). In fact, McDonald was so bad that it was irritating to have to sit through Weekend Update before seeing the rest of the show. That Jost thinks McDonald was so great is just weird. Maureen is no longer enamored with Animal House. But, believe me, you're way better off watching Animal House again than wasting your time on this piece of garbage, especially disappointing since it has a number of SNLers in the cast.

What I loved most about this movie is the fact that it has the feel of a teen comedy about the beach, but despite the fact that the Island has a beach, they used a pool. It has a feel of a teen comedy, despite the fact that most of the supporting cast were around when the 80s films this movie pays homage to came out. But the whole supporting cast was funny, being some of Saturday Night live's best new talent(Cecily Strong and Bobby Moynihan) and a few alums(Fred Armisen and Will Forte). Also being produced by the guy who created SNL, Staten Island Summer is like the big sketch they could not pull off on a sound stage.It's the age old tale of two boys trying to spend their last summer together before college trying to get laid, but set in a place nobody would have thought to set any movie, and pulls nothing back on what the Island is all about (Even including a role for Wu Tang's Method Man, a native of Shaolin)Absolutely funny.