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ABOUT THE FILM / SHORT (FROM THE INVESTORS LETTER) "...The best way I could describe it is, a funnier, updated version of ”Stand by Me”, with some “American Pie” thrown in. Drop the whole story in the mid-1980s, with the 80s clothes, and 80s music.... and you have “Under Summer." It is truly a great story and has been very entertaining to the test groups to whom we have shown the short." VIDEO CLIP
SYNOPSIS It's about five boys ages 9 to 13, in 1986, who spend the beginning of the summer hatching a plan to rob the local lumberyard and build the ultimate tree fort. After weeks of procrastination, mischief, and misadventure they finally steal some wood and build a tree fort. Days later, unexpectedly, the kids find their fort burned to the ground. With no leads on suspects, the kids decide to press on and build another fort, this time, an underground hideaway, which also gets wrecked by an unknown assailant. Bad luck? A local bully? An inside job? No one knows. Their journey includes plenty of teenage high-jinx (including a ferocious neighborhood dog named HENDRIX, a gang of break-dancing bullies, and a mysterious man named Grease Monkey), but it's also a time for personal revelations, quiet interludes, and the raucous comradeship of best friends. Interspersed with the story are moments of reflection and kids being kids, with weighty topics like "The A Team vs Knight Rider", "Dungeons and Dragons", and the consistent dissapointment of the New England Patriots winning a Super Bowl (Its 1986) Set in the 1980s,
the movie indulges an overabundance of anachronistic profanity and
a touch of mid 80’s slang. But it's delightfully entertaining
from start to finish, thanks to the rapport among its young characters
and the timeless, universal themes of friendship, family, and the
building of character and self-esteem. |
