I’m not saying that you need to have grown up in America in the 80s to enjoy this feather-light independent comedy about a 13 year old boy’s summer vacation with his family circa 1985 when Mr. Mister was on the radio, girls were on his mind and bullies were on his case… but it would help.
It’s a dead-on recreation of the era. Writer/director Michael Tully carefully lays out the details of Icee counters and the process of opening a new cassette, complete with smelling the nice clean cover insert. He also remembers the expression “No doy” (I haven’t even thought about that one in decades) and what it was like to be a hopelessly bad breakdancer. It all adds up to some real cinematic froth, fleeting and likable. It never tries to be profound. It never pretentiously sells the 80s as the greatest time in which to grow up (Tully makes fun of the 80s as much as he celebrates it). It handily mixes sincere affection with parody, mostly of The Karate Kid. Just replace martial arts with ping pong at the local underage hangout and keep everything else, including conflicts with snotty rich kids and an elder eccentric who’s secretly a badass (a well-cast Susan Sarandon). Tully tosses out references to the old Ralph Macchio movie underhanded and expects his audience to catch them.
I caught ’em, I got it, I laughed.