The “theatre kids” of the world, spurred on by the renewed cultural phenomenon of Wicked, a spate of TikTok parody musicals amidst pandemic-era social distancing, and direct tributes like Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman’s affectionate parody film Theater Camp, have reached peak cultural saturation in the past few years, and the precocious musical theatre obsessives remain as endearing and enervating as ever. Yet there is a particular niche of adolescent Broadway dreamers who haven’t quite stepped into the spotlight: those for whom musicals are too flashy and tacky, preferring the acid-tongued domestic despair of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? to the sentimental ballads of Wicked. Aspirants of adult sophistication who are still stuck in algebra class, you might find them daydreaming that they’re Elaine Stritch slinging back dry martinis, even if they’re just sipping sodas in their school cafeterias.
Griffin in Summer, writer-director Nicholas Colia’s debut feature that won the U.S. Narrative Feature prize at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival, follows the quixotic dreams of one such kid. Griffin (Everett Blunck), 14 years old, spends each summer staging his original plays in his parents’ basement with a cast of friends. His latest magnum opus is Regrets of Autumn, about the disintegrating marriage between philandering Walter and alcoholic Harriet, pushed to the breaking point by Walter’s flaunting of his tawdry mistress Scarlet. To the exasperation of his mother Helen (Melanie Lynskey), playwriting is Griffin’s only interest; he would never even consider riding his bike or going for a swim in the backyard pool.
His friends, though, have other interests this summer, much to Griffin’s consternation: His best friend and director Kara (Abby Ryder Fortson) will be spending a few weeks of the summer with her new boyfriend and his family at the beach, and the cast members (Johanna Colón, Alivia Bellamy, and Gordon Rocks) are preoccupied with more typical activities like science camp, a church production of Godspell, and parties where they split single hard seltzers five ways. With rehearsals only on weekends, Griffin spends much of his time alone, and is thrown for a loop by the initially unwelcome presence of Brad (Owen Teague), a 25-year-old handyman who blares music while lackadaisically working by the pool. The brooding Brad, though, is undeniably attractive, and Griffin’s interest is further piqued when he learns Brad is a “performance artist” trying to save enough money to move back to Bushwick. Convinced Brad is a genius artist and the love of his life, Griffin pursues a one-sided friendship that quickly veers into unhealthy obsession.
Griffin in Summer has the aesthetics and narrative structure of a typical coming-of-age indie comedy. Lensed by Felipe Vara de Rey, the film is brightly and clearly lit, and Nami Melumad’s score is plunky and lighthearted. Narratively, Griffin’s coming-of-age follows a traditional three-act structure and resolves with a hopeful ending that wraps up all loose ends. All this ensures the film is consistently watchable and pleasantly familiar, but what really distinguishes Griffin in Summer is Colia and Blunck’s willingness to delve into the idiosyncrasies and dark corners of Griffin’s character.
Griffin’s precocity is often more alienating than charming, and Colia’s writing and direction of the character make clear that, contrary to stereotype, Griffin is not inherently more mature than his peers. Rather, Griffin’s emotional growth has been stunted by taking refuge in his adult-skewing interests while ignoring the wider world. Griffin’s simultaneous self-belief and immaturity collide catastrophically when he experiences a sexual awakening through Brad. Where his friends have started dating, Griffin does not yet have the emotional tools to channel his feelings in a positive direction, leading him to pour all of his energy into Brad, and to push away his friends and his mother (who, in a subplot handled with subtle emotionality by Colia and Lynskey, has her own struggles with her absent husband, paralleling Griffin’s imaginary characters).
Blunck gives a fully committed, precise performance. He embodies Griffin’s emotional rigidity with a physical stiffness and vocal over-articulation, and he lashes out with appropriate intensity for a young teenager struggling to understand and express his feelings — a performance that is doubly impressive given Blunck’s own youth. Colia, wisely, maintains a steady comedic rhythm even when he steers the film in provocative and discomfiting directions. Out of the uniformly strong cast, Blunck and Teague in particular have exceptional timing — Teague handles his character’s shifts between quiet sulking and comically exaggerated rage deftly — and editors Jon Higgins and Sam Levy understand exactly where to cut to put a button on a joke and to keep the film moving briskly. The all-around confident craft leaves the audience in the perfect position to identify with, and just as often cringe at, Griffin as he navigates his formative summer.
The film’s culmination in a full production of Regrets of Autumn presents a satisfying opportunity to bring the film’s most effective comedic bits back around — as Colia and the game young actors demonstrate, it’s invariably funny to watch kids tear into parts far too old for them, delivering lines like “Walter, where’s my scotch?” and “They weren’t miscarriages, they were abortions! They were abortions!” with gusto. By this point, Colia has earned so much goodwill that it’s just as exciting for the film’s audience to watch this play as it is for the proud, beaming Griffin.
DIRECTOR: Nicholas Colia; CAST: Everett Blunck, Melanie Lynskey, Owen Teague; DISTRIBUTOR: Vertical; IN THEATERS: August 29; STREAMING: September 16; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 33 min.
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