Staten Island Summer (2015)

Nothing to new here, but I did get a few good laughs out of it. There was no PC garbage and teens acted like teens act. Recommend it.

Fmovies: Danny Campbell (Graham Phillips) recounts his last summer on Staten Island before going off to Harvard. He's a summer lifeguard at the kiddie pool with his best friend Frank Gomes (Zack Pearlman). Neither has any luck with girls. Slacker veteran Skootch, tough Mary Ellen, and idiot Anthony are the other lifeguards at the neighborhood pool. Victor is the crazy handyman. Chuck is the hated manager. Then Danny's former babysitter Krystal Manicucci (Ashley Greene) shows up at the pool followed by her overprotective mob boss father.

This is SNL trying to do Superbad. It doesn't really work and the comedy mostly falls flat. I don't think SNL can do nostalgic coming-of-age movie. This could work with sincerity and SNL has non in its bones. This could also try to work as a spoof of such movies and that's what The Lonely Island would do. This tries to split the difference and fails to be either. The lead and his chubby friend are perfectly cast. Mary Ellen and Anthony are fine. It's time that Ashley Greene try a different role or maybe she is trapped by her assets. The others are too SNL. Overall, there are aspects that I like but the whole does not add up.

7/10 - decently entertaining comedic coming-of-age with a fantastic cast

Staten Island Summer fmovies. 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.

Lorne Michaels' career past his prime and his most recognized comedies has actually been better, in my opinion, than when his name was stamped on nearly every mainstream comedy that was released in theaters. Michaels is known for being the producer on films such as Wayne's World, The Ladies Man, and A Night at the Roxbury, all films having some relations to Saturday Night Live. In the 1990's, Michaels was one of the biggest names in comedy and his films were largely feature-length sketches from Saturday Night Live featuring characters recognizable on a nationwide scale.

Michaels' career in the present day, to me, has been a lot more watchable than films like Coneheads or A Night at the Roxbury ever were. From films like Hot Rod, The Guilt Trip, and now Staten Island Summer, which have shifted from the idea of trying to take the charm and humor of a five minute sketch and extend it into a film has long passed, he and his team of writers, directors, and actors have found fun, often overblown comic scenarios to pleasantly play with and incorporate into a film that hits all the bases of a fun, basic comedy in a sea where far too little are seen anymore.

Staten Island Summer, Michaels' latest endeavor, released on video-on-demand platforms and eventually Netflix, a potentially telling sign of where his kinds of films are headed in the future, is yet another film portraying the local water park as the haven for lust, romance, lasting friendships, and coming of age turmoil. Much like The Way, Way Back, or even Adventureland, despite taking place at a theme park, this film shows life as a lifeguard at a waterpark as the most breezy and carefree existence that can fulfill a young teenager and supply him with fast food and cell phone money. Characters, lifeguards or maintenance crew, are shown doing so little work that it makes teenagers on shows like Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide look like workaholic, Ivy League kids instead of teenagers meandering around several stories of a middle school looking for purpose.

Nevermind that, however, for this is not a film where complete and total realism exists. We follow Danny (Graham Phillips), your average teenager, living in Staten Island and working at this fabled waterpark to make some extra pocket money. His coworkers are what make his job "the best job in the world," so he claims: there's his best friend Frank (Zack Pearlman), the roly-poly voice of reason, Anthony (John DeLuca), the best looking lifeguard who only seems to win over the hearts of Chardonnay-sipping, middle-aged women (I can relate), particularly Gina Gershon, Mary Ellen (Cecily Strong), a sarcastic, tomboyish woman who provides the most laughs and quips, and "Skootch" (Bobby Moynihan), the only soul at the waterpark not working a summer job, but rather, a career where he comes to work late and under the influence of marijuana more often than not. Their boss is the quirky and dictative Chuck (Saturday Night Live's own Mike O'Brien), who tries to put a damper on the group's fun by expelling the idea of throwing a staff party if he's not invited to it. Nonetheless, the gang of misfits work to assemble the best staff party possible, without his knowledge, complete with alcohol supplied by police officers, marijuana supplied by local ice cream truck drivers, and women supplied by the local pool.

This is where Krystal Manicucci (Ashley Greene) comes in, a character so significant to the plot that she's the only one with a firs

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.