Weird Wednesdays: One Crazy Summer

This screening was part of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Weird Wednesday series. For upcoming shows, click here.

Can you manufacture love? Can you at least reproduce it well enough to get admittance to a mediocre art college? This is the central question that One Crazy Summer raises and then quickly forgets. If it ever does find the answer, it never truly shows its work because it simply isn’t that kind of film. Still, if you’re the kind of viewer, like me, who wanted Bobcat Goldthwait cavorting around in a Godzilla suit then this movie has something for you. Because, despite its pretension towards loftier ideas about love and art, this film is essentially a cartoon. Much like its immediate predecessor ‘Savage’ Steve Holland’s Better Off Dead. It should come as no surprise it was a video store darling.

Video Store Darling is an affectionate name I conjured for a specific group of movies that failed in theaters but have gone on to become cult classics. These titles grew in popularity, from video stores or on premium cable, throughout the eighties and nineties. People rewatched these movies so much as kids that it’s burned in their brains like an image in an old CRT video monitor. Those kids grew up to become adults who fail to recognize some movies are deeply flawed and may have been theatrical flops for a reason. They will show you these movies at parties, laughing the loudest at all the smallest jokes. They will defend the problematic aspects of these movies, sometimes against their better judgment. I know because I’m one of those people, and I feel this way about 1987's Amazon Women on the Moon.

Fig. 1: Yes, it's that kind of movie.

Warner Brothers had a big hit in 1985 after taking a risk on Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure. Looking to double down on outsider art, they bankrolled 1985’s Better Off Dead and 1986’s One Crazy Summer, both imagined and directed by Holland, both starring John Cusack. The significant difference: Because Better Off Dead was considered a flop, it's been reported that Cusack was so disappointed that he was ‘checked out’ for half the shoot of One Crazy Summer.

This was a shame for many reasons. According to interviews with Holland, it was supposed to be a vacation shoot. An excuse to make a movie in Cape Cod during the summer. Craft a few cheap jokes and turn in another esoteric teen comedy/pop culture satire/romcom hybrid. The same way he did with Better Off Dead, but y’know, different.

In addition to an uncooperative Cusack, One Crazy Summer’s strength is also its biggest flaw: it’s cartoonishness. There are literal cartoon segments, a series of animated shorts about a cartoon rhino, an avatar of Cusack’s character: ‘Hoops’ McCann. The rhino looks for love in a world of fuzzy bunnies. It’s a surreal series of segments that set the tone for the rest of the movie and drive home the premise that Hoops is a romantic dreamer in a madcap world. He goes to high school in the appropriately named ‘Generic, New York.’ He longs to experience love but doesn’t know how to go about it, thinking it will fall into his lap. To add a dash of consequence, he needs to experience love because his basketball scholarship fell through and he needs to do an animated essay on the subject of love or he won’t get into art college! 

Fig. 2: Murray, Joel - doing what he does best.

So his sidekick George Calamari, played by sidekick/best friend/comic relief all-star Joel Murray, recommends they head out to Nantucket to find love at the seaside. En route they encounter a potential love interest, Demi Moore as the aspiring musician Cassandra. She’s on the run from bikers which provides an easy excuse for an exciting chase sequence that ends with jumping a station wagon onto a ferry. 

Once Hoops and George arrive in Nantucket, the number of side characters and comedic premises begin to multiply exponentially. There’s SCTV’s Joe Flaherty as the militaristic Army surplus shopkeeper/scout leader, who neglects his sensitive son Ack Ack Raymond, played by Curtis Armstrong from Revenge of the Nerds. A movie studio is shooting a Jaws-style aquatic monster movie on the island. The Stork twins, played by Tom Villard and none other than Bobcat Goldthwait, are keen to get jobs on the film set. More on that later. 

It turns out Cassandra’s grandfather’s house is the target of greedy land developers. This is a 1986 comedy, naturally, there’s a greedy developer involved! Also, because of the 1986 of it all, Hoops must be part of a class warfare sub-plot. Snobby rich girl Cookie enters the scene, eager to date Hoops behind her equally preppy boyfriend Teddy’s back …for some reason. 

Egg Stork (Goldthwait) gets stuck in a Godzilla costume. Because as we all know, every movie set has at least one highly detailed film-accurate 1967-era Godzilla costume ready to wear at any time. I think that was part of the Paramount Decree. This sets up an exemplary gag for this movie wherein the developer promo party where Goldthwait, in costume, stomps all over the little model of the development. Get it?

Fig. 3: Godzilla Plus Fun

I did. That was probably one of the strongest gags for my kaiju-loving heart. It also illustrates the tricky bit when analyzing a comedy of any stripe because the ultimate goal is ‘will it make me laugh?’ Followed immediately by ‘…for the right reasons?’ Those questions are about as subjective as goal lines get. 

I’m happy to say One Crazy Summer does pass the ‘make me laugh’ test, some of the gags were so absurd I couldn’t help but chuckle. As far as the second criteria is concerned I don’t remember anything particularly egregious for a movie of it’s time. Also to the movie’s credit, there’s an awareness behind the silliness of it’s own boilerplate ‘Save the town from the greedy developer snobs versus slobs’ plotline. For a movie from 1986 I think that’s a little ahead of the curve. That flavor of ironic self-aware humor won’t really become ascendant until the 1990s.

Another example of this film’s wry and cartoony sensibility, it seeks to avoid brutality of any consequence. The movie, via Cassandra, proposes an impromptu basketball shootout instead of a fistfight. This leads to a bit where Hoops absolutely blows it with nothing but bricks from within the free-throw line. Are you kidding me, McCann? You thought you were gonna get a basketball scholarship? You shouldn’t even be able to call yourself ‘Hoops’ with weak-ass tea like that. For shame. 

None of that matters. At least plot-wise. Cassandra’s rock show to save her house is okay, she’s no Ellen Aim from Streets of Fire. But who is? Unfortunately, none of that matters either, because the bank has already foreclosed on the house. The gang forgot capital is dead labor, sucking vampire-like on the living for its growth. Or so I’ve heard. Ack-Ack proposes they fix up a boat to compete and win the big boat regatta and claim the million-dollar prize and buy back the house. That’s right, the climax is a boat regatta!

Did I mention that Hoops is afraid of water and hates boats? Did I mention Hoop’s little sister Squid and the recurring gags about her mangy dog? Did I mention George’s Uncle Frank has been obsessed with winning a radio contest for years? Those spaghettified plot lines have only the barest connection to anything else happening in the movie, but all of those elements are part of the finale anyway.

Fig. 4: The Brain Trust

Writing a plot summary for a movie like this made me feel like I was having a mental breakdown. I also reckon for a screwball comedy that’s a feature not a bug. One thing I recommend to anyone engaging with comedy: If there’s no place for a traditional joke, at least be weird. I think Steve Holland understands this idea.

As a cartoon of a movie it is certainly weird. All it asks of the audience is to sit back, relax, and let the barebones motivation behind some of these premises wash over you. I can see why this was and still is a video store darling. It was made to be put on in the backgrounds of parties and bars. Gags arrive so fast and furiously, even if you don’t love a joke, you are on to the next before they can fully register in your brain. 

I could take issue with the movie’s main premise: the search for love. In my experience, love does not happen on its own, it can’t be manufactured, it’s something to be sowed and nurtured like a tree. Also in my experience, there’s no love to be found in Nantucket. In any event, One Crazy Summer makes it clear that it’s not particularly concerned with its own premise, so I won’t be either. One thing is for sure, it lives up to the promise of its title. That was one crazy summer.

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