Snack Shack

Grade: A

Snack Shack is the kind of movie that would have been absolutely perfect for me in the summer of 2000. I was 19 years old. Not doing much besides working a lot, seeing my best friend to play music or watch The Simpsons, and going to the movies as often as possible. Single. Lonely. Left to think “maybe one day…” – but for the moment, I could live vicariously through a good romcom about teenage puppy love with a bangin’ soundtrack and good-looking stars. Though it arrives 24 years late for me, it’s a pleasure to see it now. I can’t be the only 19-year-old boy grown to middle age that it will touch.

It’s the summer of 1991 in Nebraska. It’s funny how the 90s now looks as cheesy a decade as we thought the 80s were, 30 years ago. Teenage best friends A.J. and Moose have just gotten in trouble for ditching their school field trip to do some off-track betting in the next state. Matters aren’t helped much when their side hustle of making and selling homemade beer is discovered. A.J.’s parents are ready to ship him off to military school, unless he can get an honest summer job, pronto. They realize the local pool needs someone to run the concession stand. Through some clever finagling and persuasive talking (one of the movie’s joys is in how SMART these boys are), they get the blessing from the city to man the snack shack. They work it like gangbusters, and make bank.

A.J. is the primary character of the two boys. We follow him, and get to meet his family. Conor Sherry plays him with an endearing awkwardness and charm – and when the inevitable love triangle emerges, we hope he’s the one she ends up with. He does some of the funniest slapstick and physical comedy I have ever seen, in a bit where he stumbles down the stairs to answer the telephone, then gets tangled in the long cord. Gabriel LaBelle conquered the Spielberg thing as teenage Sammy Fabelman in The Fabelmans. Here, as Moose, he provides us with the quintessential fast-talking witty sidekick. David Costabile and Gillian Vigman, as A.J.’s parents, are like if John Waters directed Leave it to Beaver. In my favorite moment of several hysterical ones, they put on auctioneer voices when A.J. tries to negotiate for a better bedtime. “9:45 we got 9:45 do I hear 10 yes 10 it is can we go up 10:15 going once going twice and SOLD! 10:15!” The humor and energy is kept up at a fever pitch, never faltering.

Let’s talk about that prospective love interest. A.J.’s next-door neighbor’s cousin Brooke moves in for the summer, and becomes a lifeguard at the pool. The nickname she gives A.J. is similar to what J.K. Simmons always called Andy Samberg in Palm Springs. In that one, the second syllable was “bird.” Here, it’s “pig.” Mika Abdalla, as Brooke, is a brown-eyed brunette with one of the sweetest onscreen faces since Danica McKellar’s Winnie Cooper in The Wonder Years. She steals every scene she’s in, and needs to be a star.

The movie gets deep, serious, and more meaningful in the second half. Characters that we thought were made from a cookie cutter come to life in unexpected and poignant ways that always feel true to the material. The montages and needle-drops on the soundtrack all have a purpose; it never feels like they’re just there to kill time. I almost don’t want to talk too much about the tonal shift, and leave you to discover what happens and why – as I did. The movie goes in amazing narrative directions, never losing the infectious wide-eyed wonderment of young people coming of age. This is a film that has its cake, eats it, and I couldn’t believe how much it gets away with it all. This isn’t elegant, upstanding cinema, but when it comes to a movie like this, I haven’t seen a more perfect one.

By the end, I didn’t just see an entertaining movie. I felt like I lived there. I felt like I knew these people. I felt like I had experienced the summer of 1991 in Nebraska – or at the very least, the summer of 2000 in Georgia. Sometimes there’s a reason why a movie isn’t screened for major critics. In other cases, it’s an inexplicable crime. A user review on IMDb said it best: Snack Shack is the kind of film you should show up for and support. I settled in for what I figured would be a fun romp with foul-mouthed teenagers making the best out of a humble summer job by the pool. It wouldn’t change my life, but I’d have a few laughs for 112 minutes. I had no idea I was about to see one of the best movies of the year.

Grade: A