Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
The Last Summer is now streaming on Netflix, which is good news for anyone looking for a slightly ridiculous campy teen movie with a cast of trendy young actors. The film stars Riverdale‘s K.J. Apa as a recent high school graduate named Griffin, and The Fosters‘s Maia Mitchell as Phoebe, the recent high school graduate he falls in love with.
Griffin and Phoebe’s romance is mixed in among five or so other coming-of-age storylines. There’s a popular pretty girl named Erin (Halston Sage), who breaks up with her boyfriend and begins dating a rookie Cubs player (Teen Wolf‘s Tyler Posey). There’s a down-to-earth girl-next-door, Audrey (Sosie Bacon), who’s got a summer babysitting gig. There’s a self-proclaimed womanizer named Foster (Wolfgang Novogratz) who’s secretly doubting himself. There’s an unpopular nerd named Chad (Jacob McCarthy) who hooks up with an older woman. Both the womanizer and the nerd have best friends with their own coming-of-age arcs, too. And so on and so on.
I’d be lying to you if I told you I could keep track of all the various characters in this film and what exactly it is they are doing. (It sort of seems like not much of anything? At all?) But I can highlight some stand-out ridiculous moments that made me laugh out loud:
- The nerd (Jacob McCarthy) has apparently been branded a nerd because he was “caught reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at the homecoming game.”
- K.J. Apa and Maia Mitchell compare the famous alumni of their soon-to-be colleges (Columbia and NYU, respectively) and decide that Miles Teller is more impressive namedrop than Lady Gaga. (???)
- Tyler Posey literally falls out of the sky into Halston Sage’s lap.
- K.J. delivers a monologue to a crowd of confused public transit riders when Maia Mitchell fails to text him back immediately.
Obviously, some things in this film are meant to be funny, but The Last Summer really takes camp to the next level. But hey, if you’re looking for a so-bad-it’s-good Friday night laugh, then bust out the wine and queue up The Last Summer.
