TITLE: One Crazy Summer (1986) AUTHOR: Joe Johnson DATE: 10:38:00 PM ----- BODY:
Our recent episode on John Hughes made me think back to another director known (a little) for his 1980's teen comedies.

Dir: "Savage" Steve Holland

It’s easy to remember the 1980’s teen comedy as a franchise owned by John Hughes. The once prominent director codified the teen experience in Sixteen Candles and the Breakfast Club with such style and authenticity that little thought is given to his doppelgänger, "Savage" Steve Holland. To begin with, Holland built his best stories around a young John Cusack: that penetrating combination of charm, hipness, and accessibility introduced in Rob Reiner's The Sure Thing. Despite the glory of the Hughes films, they lacked the one thing that Holland had: the teen leading man, Jimmy Stewart in a veneer of cult band t-shirts.

Holland's two most successful films, Better Off Dead and One Crazy Summer, took the teen comedy places few went. He strove for comedy of the absurd: a vital blend of exaggeration, darkness, and subtlety. One Crazy Summer begins in this slightly bent universe with the high school graduation of Generic, New York. We are quickly introduced to the small band of characters. At the center is "Hoops" (Cusack), the unusually normal cartoonist chronicling a quest for love.

Given the opportunity to seek a small adventure, he departs with his best friend (Joel Murray) – who brings his elementary age sister – picking up a troubled bar singer called Cassandra (Demi Moore). They run off to Nantucket where people are every bit as unusual as they were on the mainland. They join up with the Stork twins ( Tom Villard and "Bobcat" Goldthwait) and a pacifist Marine (Curtis Armstrong) and begin a mission to save a house from an evil businessman (Animal House's villain Neidermeyer).

Hoops’ quest for love is ongoing, and his experience earning the affection of Cassandra is well intentioned, though ultimately lacking any tangible chemistry. The plot may not be overwhelmingly interesting, but Holland’s direction and love of the absurd makes the journey unforgettable. In the course of 90 minutes the viewer witnesses a rabid mechanical dolphin, two cases of grand theft auto, an underwater lobster attack, escape from a motorcycle gang, a yacht race, the destruction of a radio station by bazooka, and Godzilla’s rampage of a housing development.

This is hardly the usual teen film. But somehow Holland captures something quite essential to the teen experience. Cusack embodies average-nice-guy with such consistency, he could be placed in the Smithsonian as an example of the 1980’s adolescent. In this world of surrealism and unpredictability, he is normal and a mirror on that awkward transition from the stability of teen life to adulthood. The real world is not normal.

When the movies are reviewed, John Hughes' films will probably remain the official documents of teen life in that otherwise forgettable decade. He succeeded by imitating some form of an ideal life. But Holland’s interpretation is painted in Charles Addams strokes, preferring to disclose authenticity through contrast and exaggeration. It doesn’t make One Crazy Summer more accurate than Sixteen Candles. But it does make it a lot more difficult to outgrow.

***1/2 of *****

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