- Title: One Crazy Summer
- IMDb: link
Throwback Thursday takes us back to a movie that feels every bit the 80s comedy that it is. One Crazy Summer casts John Cusack as an aspiring artist who heads off for a summer vacation to Nantucket with his high school best friend George (Joel Murray) after their graduation. There the artist, who knows nothing of love, will catch the eye of a young rocker (Demi Moore) headed home to help keep her father’s estate from falling into the clutches of a greedy land tycoon (Mark Metcalf), and the bombshell girlfriend (Kimberly Foster) of the local douchebag (Matt Mulhern), who, of course, is also the tycoon’s son.
The cast is filled out of at least 3 too many odd characters including Curtis Armstrong as the peaceful son of his gung-ho father (Joe Flaherty), Bobcat Goldthwait and Tom Villard as twin local mechanics, crazy Uncle Frank (Bruce Wagner), and George’s younger sister (Kristen Goelz) and her dog (which is nowhere near as ugly as various characters claim throughout the film).
More of a thin string to hold together various antics than an actual plot (for example, the twins filling the douchebag’s swimming pool with live lobsters, a character getting knocked unconscious by farts, or Goldthwait getting trapped in Godzilla costume set on fire and stomping his way through a scale model of the proposed island development), Hoops (Cusack) will spend time with both women before throwing in his lot with Cassandra (Moore) and organize his new stable of friends to help save her father’s house which culminates in the unlikely group entering and winning the local regatta (complete with ship repair montage).
Your enjoyment of One Crazy Summer will likely depend on your threshold for crazy antics and dumb humor (and the script certainly tests Cusack’s likability by turning Hoops from a loveless knob into a repentant womanizer in two beats). While no one is much of a standout here, everyone is cast well for their particular role including the wacky supporting players, Foster as the bombshell, and Cusack’s longtime pal Jeremy Piven gets a small role here as one the douchebag’s crew. The movie is also notable for the animated segments, drawn by Hoops, involving a cartoon version of himself failing to find love and often being taken advantage of by a gang of fluffy bunnies. The animated hero will find a happy ending, along with Hoops as he and Cassandra, and walk into the sunset together hand in hand.
Watch the trailer
