[yasr_overall_rating]
In the 1970s, an overweight bullied teen experiences a turning point summer in which he learns to stand up for himself.
It’s summer 1976, and teenager Bobby Marks (Blake Cooper) is heavy and self-conscious about this time of year when people strip down to their bathing suits and enjoy the usual summer fun.
The story finds Bobby’s family — mom, dad, sis, and the boy himself — heading to their annual summertime home. Mom (Judy Greer) and dad (Luke Wilson) are a bit tense, in part because mom is looking to join the workforce against old-fashioned dad’s wishes, but sis Michelle (Liana Liberato), is revving to go, in every possible way.
It all makes for a fairly typical coming-of-age story, based on a teen fiction novel, ‘One Fat Summer,’ by Robert Lipsyte. Young Bobby is honest to a fault, sweet, tender, innocent, and hopelessly in love with the big-nosed girl he hangs out with each summer, who seems to not think of him as anything more than her pal. Dad’s hard on him, mom dotes on him, and sis expects him to cover for her as she parties the summer away. The hook, I guess, is that Bobby is fat. If they took that out and threw in Steve Carrell in a role too complex for his acting abilities, it’d literally be like every coming-of-age film from the late aughts to early 2010s.
When dad tells Bobby he’s going to have to do something with himself that summer, the kid takes a job with a stern but kind-hearted man, Dr. Kahn, played by Donald Sutherland, who has an exceptionally big house on the town lake. Meanwhile, the local toughs repeatedly pick on him, one of them because Bobby apparently took his summer job.
It’s the kind plot devices typical of movies of this type, except this time the bullies seem far too old for these sorts of shenanigans. Acting is superb across the board. “The Maze Runner”’s Blake Cooper, who put on some extra padding for the role, is Bobby through and through. His teenage love interest, played by Danielle Rose Russell, finds a nice take on the girl next door, and Liberato as the big sister is able to take this stereotypical part to a place that feels real and grounded. The underserved Greer, Wilson, and Sutherland all hit the right notes in their brief scenes.
Known mostly for his television directing, Jim Loach has a good sense of style and pacing, and the cinematography is outstanding, but, ultimately, it all adds up to the same old, same old and a story that’s a little uneven.
I can’t say for sure how closely the movie adheres to the teen novel, putting aside that the book takes place in the 1950s, but the story, which I imagine is equal parts comedy and drama in book form, is terribly uneven onscreen, even going so far as to get quite dark in a scene where it seems certain that main character Bobby is going to be raped (he isn’t), a la the famed “Deliverance” scene (squeal, he does).
Overall, there’s nothing really new here, but if you’re a fan of the teen actors or the original book, this might be a fun pic for you. Otherwise, stick with your “Stand By Me’s,” “Ghost Worlds,” “Perks of Being a Wallflowers,” and “Rushmores.”
Now available on DVD
