For the first time on Blu-ray as part of their Warner Archive Collection, One Crazy Summer provides a different kind of humor than you'd expect, delivering quite a few laughs along the way.
Disclaimer: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided us with a free copy of this Blu-ray/DVD that we reviewed in this blog post. The opinions we share are our own.
“Hoops McCann has the name but not the talent to carry on the family basketball tradition. He’d rather use his drawing skills to earn an art-school scholarship by writing and illustrating a love story. This summer in Nantucket, he’s going to get the necessary romantic experience.
John Cusack (as Hoops), Demi Moore, Curtis Armstrong and Bobcat Goldthwait headline One Crazy Summer, a zany comedy from Savage Steve Holland, creator of the cult favorites Better Off Dead and How I Got into College. The annual Nantucket regatta sets the stage from Hoops’ bid to earn his lady’s love, and a larcenous land developer’s party sets the stage for an attack by Godzilla (as only Goldthwait can play him). Overworked and under-vacationed? Then join one crazy cast of characters for One Crazy Summer and soak up some laughs!”
In the 1980’s, there were no shortages of coming-of-age comedies, or shortages of John Cusack films. While there may not be many who are familiar with Writer/Director Savage Steve Holland, his earlier collaboration with John Cusack gave us Better Off Dead, a film that is a bit more well known than this, but whose weird and zany humor put his films in a category all their own, which didn’t help them financially during their initial releases. Thanks to this recent inclusion in the Warner Archive Collection, a new generation can appreciate the weird and wild ride of One Crazy Summer.
What films during this era did wonderfully was identify with the younger generation that was coming into adulthood; the good and the bad, and the resistance to letting go of a care-free lifestyle and facing the real world. While many of these take themselves somewhat serious with a touch of light-heartedness, One Crazy Summer takes it up a notch to the absurd: cars ramping insane distances, children floating away while holding on to kites, and grandma laying down the check to her guests at family dinner. This isn’t the type of humor that drives the story, but gives it a bit of tongue-in-cheek style really can be a hit or a huge miss. What does make this an endearing, coming-of-age film is the relationship between Hoops and Demi Moore’s character Cassandra. Through the odd, yet sometimes humorous cartoons that Hoops draws, we see his longing to find love immediately after graduating high school. Although he may be relatively lost in the rest of his life, that desire is what drives him, and his accidental encounter with Cassandra and chance meetings on the island of Nantucket is the opportunity he needs.
The main conflict of the story revolves around coveted land on Nantucket that has just been passed down to Cassandra after a death in the family. Local scum and land developer Aguilla Beckerstead (Mark Metcalf) has arranged to purchase the family property and demolish Cassandra’s family home, which houses many elderly residents with nowhere else to go, unless she can come up with the back-payment on the mortgage of $3,000.00. The entire land deal also hinges on the victory of Beckerstead’s son, equally scum, Teddy (Matt Mulhern), in a sailing race that his grandfather insists he wins each year or they are cut off financially. If this sounds a bit convoluted, you’re not wrong.
The film has a decent set up, and honestly does have some good gags but the majority of the writing in the film just isn’t nearly up to par compared to some of the other films of this type that came out in the 80s. Although there are some good elements to the relationship between the Hoops and Cassandra characters, every other character in the film is just poorly written, or relegated simply to trying to get laughs, such as the Stork brothers, but I may add that they fail in this regard quite spectacularly. Why Bobcat Goldthwait doing his ‘voice’ (or absence of) was ever considered funny is beyond me. He obnoxious, jarring, and incomprehensible for the majority of the time. The secondary characters just don’t add much to the story, despite trying, there were just so many missed opportunities with the best friend and the other three in the group. The film may not be going for pure substance, I understand that, but a little more depth instead of sight gags would have rounded out the film I believe.
Video
One Crazy Summer is presented in 1080p High-Definition Widescreen 1.85:1. Warner’s release of this film marks its Blu-ray debut, featuring a nice transfer that is very crisp and detailed. Grain is kept at a manageable level, with some very vibrant colors and accurate flesh tones. The animation scenes especially look great.
Audio
The audio is presented in English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. This track sounds decent enough, with no issues of note. There aren’t many instances in it that could benefit from true surround sound, but the soundtrack selection is really great, and overall would have been nice to have some kind of remix.
Special Features
Extras carry over from the DVD release including:
- Feature-Length Audio Commentary by Curtis Armstrong, Bobcat Goldthwait and Writer/Director Savage Steve Holland
- Theatrical Trailer
One Crazy Summer is in a league of its own. It has some laughs, and a few eye-rolls, but overall a genuinely overlooked 80s comedy that now can be appreciated in a new medium thanks to the Warner Archive Collection.
