Poised between a near-experimental slacker picture and a Sundance-ready indie, “Bummer Summer” is about three-fourths of the way to being a really good movie.
And there’s enough that’s promising about it to make you suspect that director Zach Weintraub, who shot the film in Olympia, is going to make a terrific feature sometime soon. As it is, this one should hit with a college-age audience looking for a movie with a genuinely independent vibe.
The prospect of a shapeless summer faces two brothers. Older brother Ben (played by Weintraub) has come home from college, while 17-year-old Isaac (Mackinley Robinson) is dawdling along in what seems to be an indifferent back-seat-of-the-car relationship with a girlfriend.
Some live music at a house party brings the brothers in contact with Ben’s ex-girlfriend, Lila (Julia McAlee), who is flirty and lively and maybe a bit of a handful. We can see very quickly that Lila is making some subtle overtures toward Isaac, although Ben appears oblivious to this.
In its own slouching-toward-a-plotline way, “Bummer Summer” gets these three on a road trip about halfway through the movie, which provides a bit of momentum. It’s just enough to give a push to the incidents that follow.
Those incidents are sometimes engaging and well-observed, sometimes bloodless. The screenplay credits suggest the actors were involved in the writing of the picture, which might explain why the performances are fine but the dialogue is uneven.
The movie’s in black and white, a seemingly arbitrary decision, although the images are sharp enough to justify the choice. The precision of Weintraub’s camera sense, which runs against the grain of many handheld, grainy-looking DIY movies by young filmmakers, is in itself a sign of promise.
“Bummer Summer” won the top prize at the 2010 Locals Sightings Film Festival (for films made in the Northwest), and it’s just the kind of picture that should win a prize like that. Sundance? Sundance can wait.
“Bummer Summer”
A made-in-Olympia piece of slacker cinema about two brothers going on a road trip with a woman who seems interested in both of them. Or possibly not; the movie’s not going to press the point, which is both its weakness and its strength. Director Zach Weintraub hasn’t put it all together here, but his black-and-white image-making is precise.
Rated: Not rated; probably PG-13 for language
Showing: Northwest Film Forum
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