Plot: An awkward high school senior hires an exotic dancer to help seduce her longtime crush before graduation, leading to unexpected friendship and lessons in self-confidence, acceptance and adulthood.
Review: The sex comedy has long been the domain of male-centric stories. In the early 2000s, there was a shift to telling more female-led comedies that used nudity and graphic content to show that women could be just as nasty as men. While it has been a while since a solid R-rated comedy has done well on the big screen, several independent films have been snatched up by streaming platforms to pad their libraries. The latest addition to Hulu’s slate is one of the more substantive efforts and comes from actress Jillian Bell, making her feature directorial debut. Summer of 69 starts with a tone and approach that makes it seem in line with films like The Girl Next Door or Superbad but ends up being a much stronger project thanks to charismatic performances from Chloe Fineman and Sam Morelos. With appearances from Charlie Day, Paula Pell, and more, Summer of 69 is a sweet comedy about friendship and the titular sex act delivered in a way that defied my expectations.
Summer of 69 follows Abby Flores (That 90’s Show’s Sam Morelos), a high school senior with a crush on classmate Max Warren (Matt Cornett). Both teens attend a Catholic school where Abby pines after Max despite having no self-confidence. When Max breaks up with his girlfriend, Abby hears a rumor that he is into sixty-nine. Using money saved from her video-game streaming channel, Abby decides to pay stripper Santa Monica (Chloe Fineman) to teach her everything she needs to know about sex so that she can sixty-nine Max and win the guy of her dreams. It is a ridiculous premise that allows Morelos to play with Abby’s shy but charmingly cute demeanor. On the flip side of the narrative, Santa Monica struggles with her upcoming high school reunion and whether to attend as she feels she has not done anything with her life despite encouragement from her coworkers, Angel (Liza Koshy) and Destiny (Nicole Byer). That is when Santa Monica’s boss, Betty Spaghetti (Paula Pell), informs them the strip club will close unless they can raise $20,000 to repay a loan to rival club owner Rick Richards (Charlie Day).
The connection between Abby and Santa Monica serves as the center of Summer of 69 and works well thanks to the chemistry between Sam Morelos and Chloe Fineman. Rather than having Fineman’s Santa Monica portrayed as a ditz or vain, a genuine friendship develops between the high school senior and the mentor. While the idea of Santa Monica teaching the naive Abby about her internal “sex machine” personality, the revelations and connections they make with each other are far more layered and work despite some superficial moments that do not get explored as much as they should have including a scene with some sketchy guys who hire Santa Monica that could have turned into something much darker. A foray to an adult toy store devolves into a strange horror-themed daydream that could have been a recurring plot device, but instead is just a one-off moment that does not happen again. A lot happens in just an hour-and-forty-minute film, with some subplots getting wrapped up more neatly than others.
The film is a solid showcase for Chloe Fineman, who has shown a wide range on Saturday Night Live since 2019, along with roles in Damien Chazelle’s Babylon, Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis, and Noah Baumbach’s White Noise. With upcoming roles in Freakier Friday and The Dink, Summer of 69 is Fineman’s most significant role to date. While she has shown a skill for impressions and physical comedy, Fineman turns Santa Monica into a rounded character while showcasing unexpected exotic dance skills. Fineman plays her role as a woman trying to make something more out of her life, which has not ended up where she wanted it to be, but it is handled nicely. Interactions with her high school rival, played by Natalie Morales, are handled well, whereas the broader comedy from Charlie Day and Paula Pell feels a little out of place. The high school-set scenes are handled well compared to the sillier sequences outside of school.
Co-written by Jillian Bell, Liz Nico, and Jules Byrne, Summer of 69 has a lot of story in a short running time. It occasionally feels like it includes more than it needed to, which all leads to a Risky Business-themed dance number to try and save the strip club. Jillian Bell has experience as a writer, having worked on Saturday Night Live before garnering roles in everything from silly series Workaholics to small turns in Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master and Inherent Vice. Bell had a great turn in Brittany Runs a Marathon, which boasts a balance of comedy and drama that can be felt in Summer of 69. Bell also has a cameo that fits nicely into the quirkier side of the film, but as a filmmaker, she does good work balancing the crass with the heartfelt. There is minimal nudity outside of some brief porn clips, but much of the mature subject matter is handled through dialogue and is treated as humorous without mocking it. In short, it works better than I anticipated.
Because of Chloe Fineman and Sam Morelos, Summer of 69 is less a sex comedy than a comedy about sex. Using elements of buddy comedies, Jillian Bell turns what could have been a throwaway comedy into a sweet and platonic story about two friends finding each other. It is never weird that there is an age gap between the high school senior and the thirtysomething stripper she befriends, and it works naturally because the two actors work well together. I would have liked some of the sillier subplot elements and the out-of-place daydream to have been excised in favor of a more streamlined story or maybe even a less tidy ending, but Summer of 69 worked better for me than I thought it would. A fun, lightweight comedy that will be nice counterprogramming this summer.
Summer of 69 premieres on May 9th on Hulu.
Source:
JoBlo.com
