The Last Summer. William Bindley. 2019. ☆★★★★★
So… this is one of those teen dramedies about a pre-nostalgic “last summer”. There are jocks, there are nerds, there are Heathers.
It’s such a generic throwback of a movie.
I can’t decide whether the filmmakers are totally inept or they’re taking brave artistic choices: Everything is washed-out and often in somewhat bizarre colours. The lighting is insane: Even the children have bags under their eyes and look like they do meth on a regular basis. The audio is weirdly subdued for this type of movie: When you’d expect a slamming dubstep track, there’s a plunkly (that’s a word) guitar instead. When you expect the characters to drop some witty repartee, they just stand there… staring…
Some things are standard: All the teenagers look like they’re in their mid-20s. Some in their early 30s. Makes it difficult to tell the teenagers from their parents, but you know.
I’m guessing this was pitched to Netflix as a really cheaply made movie that everybody who loves teen rom coms will at least spent ten minutes with. So just another random walk in Netflix’ quest to have a library of movie-like objects they own themselves.
It’s insanely boring and virtually charmless.
Once in a while, there’s a joke that lands, but in this context I’m almost offended: “How dare you make me smile after boring me this much!” That’s unfair, I know, but it’s the truth.
This post is part of the NFLX2019 blog series.