Summerhood

I saw Summerhood at the 2008 Maui film festival. By far one of the best movies played. The time of the movie was set in the late 80's to early 90's. I was about the same age as the kids in the early 90's.A great job was done with the fine details to fit this strange place in time were the 80's ended and the 90's began.(the ninja turtles references made my night!) This movie is truly a instant classic if you grew up in this time. More movies should be made with this kind of truth and honesty about kids at this age. I knew way more than my parents ever thought I did. I'm sure kids today know even more. Its time we wake up to the fact that kids are not as innocent as we make them out to be. The child actors were great,it really felt like the words belonged to the kids not a script. Good work everyone who worked on this film...............ALOHA

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.

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.

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 - !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

While this is one of those feel good movies involving young children, this is a more earnest and, to a vast extent, less cliché, than other movies of its kind. The dialog is less refined, and just something that would be expected to be uttered by kids in real life.

The performances by the kids were adequate. I didn't feel that one stood out more than the other, as it seemed that the director was content to let the story take the main stage. Even though the movie's essentially about Fetus and his epiphanies at the summer camp it didn't really focus on Fetus all the time. Rather, it meandered away from him, and I feel that this is where a flaw occurred. There was no proper focus so I couldn't really connect with Fetus at times. Thankfully, his attraction towards Sundae was not one of those moments, though sadly it wasn't properly developed. Some of the dialog was muffled and didn't make sense in tying it to the story.

Having said that Summerhood is still a movie worth watching. There are some laugh aloud moments, some poignant moments, and some moments that will make you reflect about your best summer, or your first kiss, or when life really began for you. Don't let this movie pass you by.