This movie is a recession indicator.
Have you ever seen a film so bad it makes you start coming up with conspiracy theories as to how it got made? That’s what Summer of 69 did to me. Is Hollywood making slop to punish actors, writers, and innocent bystander audiences for the strike? Or did the strikes frighten actors so badly that they will take anything they can get? Is the Marvel-ification of Hollywood giving us brain drain? Are we all disassociating from 2020 PTSD? Was ketamine involved? Is it brain damage from the amount of lead in vapes? Tiktok? The inevitable progression of capitalism? HELP ME UNDERSTAND HOW THIS GOT MADE.
Based on the cover and trailer, I was hoping this would be a modern, possibly gay, version of Melanie Griffith’s 1994 movie Milk Money. It is an extremely 90’s rom-com about a group of 11-year-old boys who save up all of their “milk money” to hire a hooker. It’s just as insane a premise as it sounds, and objectively bad, but I love movies about whores and I would probably watch Melanie Griffith do her taxes for two hours, so it’s a cult classic in my book.
Summer of 69 feels like it was written exclusively by Chat GPT. Aside from a handful of zingers, the dialogue is unbelievably corny, which is especially depressing because it has comedic talent like Nicole Byer, Chloe Fineman, and even a tits-out Paula Pell as an aging stripper named Betty Spaghetti—there was potential here!
Summer of 69 feels like it was written exclusively by Chat GPT.
The characters lacked any real development, the plot seemed underdeveloped and the whole thing felt completely unsure who its audience was. This could’ve been a raunchy gay coming of age a la Bottoms or Booksmart, but instead it’s tepid, unfunny, cliche, and so bad it made me angry. The plot follows Abby, a high school senior who moonlights as a popular and financially successful Twitch streamer. She’s had a crush on a boy in her class, Max, since childhood, and after he finally breaks up with his girlfriend of the past decade, Abby is ready to make her move. She hears a rumour he’s really into 69-ing. Feeling sexually inexperienced, on the eve of her 18th birthday, Abby visits a local strip club and is mesmerized by dancer Santa Monica. She propositions Santa Monica with $20,000 to spend a week being her sex and confidence coach.
Santa Monica is coincidentally trying to save her beloved strip club from closing, and it is exactly 20k short on unpaid debts. She agrees to the booking and the two form an unlikely friendship. It’s pretty formulaic from there: makeover montage, cliche dramatic sex work scene, they breakup because of course Abby never had the 20 grand to pay Santa Monica, they make up because they’re “real friends” now, together they figure out how to save the club, cue happy ending, etc.
The Summer of 69 we deserved could have featured Abby hiring Santa Monica to learn confidence to impress a boy, but she starts falling for Santa Monica. The bones of a classic queer awakening story are right there: Abby learning confidence from Santa Monica, only to realize she’s less interested in impressing a boy and more enthralled with the woman teaching her. A classic queer rite of passage rarely explored in cinema: Do I want to be her or do I… want her? The messy complexities of figuring yourself out—it’s awkward and funny and clumsy and has so much potential to be hilariously cringe and deeply relatable. We could have had queer awakenings, sapphic yearning, ambiguous lesbian friendships, heterophobia!
Instead, the Summer of 69 we got: unwatchable, unbelievable, unfunny, and not gay at all. A watered-down straight fantasy that feels allergic to risk. A movie that feels like punishment. Not even a dab of gay subtext! I would have even settled for an unnecessary make out for the male gaze a la Cruel Intentions. But no. Nada. Zip.
Instead, the Summer of 69 we got: unwatchable, unbelievable, unfunny, and not gay at all.
What a waste!
At time of writing this, Summer of 69 has a 90% on Rotten Tomatoes, with reviews from alleged ’top critics’ like: “The only annoying thing about 'Summer of 69' is that this is the exact kind of laugh out loud, emotionally satisfying, share-it-with-a-friend comedy that would probably find a sizable audience in theaters — and instead it’s a Hulu exclusive.” and “Summer of 69 ultimately sends you out on a well-earned high note. When it comes to sex comedies, it’s hard to ask for much more than a good climax.”
Respectfully, what the fuck are these people talking about? There’s no possibility that people watched this movie and felt this way. It’s got to be AI! Am I witnessing dead internet theory happening in real time? A movie written by robots getting critiqued by robots? Is everyone on drugs???? I dare anyone to watch the entirety of this movie without any distractions, I guarantee you’ll scream and writhe in pain. It’s probably being used to torture prisoners of war somewhere.
Please don’t even waste your time watching this movie. Instead try: Bottoms, Booksmart, or Milk Money. You can even double feature another Melanie Griffith sex work role in Brian De Palma’s 1984 erotic thriller Body Double and pretend it exists in the same film universe preceding Milk Money. Fun!
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