An American Summer

Fourteen-year-old Tom Travis (Michael Landes) is a typical all-American boy of the 1970s, not above getting into some mischief, but a splendid kid at heart. Tom comes from the affluent and very conservative Chicago suburb of Wilmette. With Tom in the custody of his mother during a bitter divorce battle, she decides that Tom will be much better off in Southern California where her sister Sunny (Joanna Kerns) resides.

Tom views his new home with disdain and quickly makes it clear to all within earshot that the entire spectrum of coastal Southern California lifestyles--from skateboarding to surfing--leaves him cold. His aunt Sunny, on the other hand, who lives in a far-out bungalow with vividly splashy artsy-craftsy furnishings, really digs her life by the Pacific Ocean. The epitome of the Vietnam-era counterculture, she is a strong, independent, outspoken survivor of the 1960s and is still living with those memories. A true bohemian, she is also a practical, no-nonsense woman and a single parent with a baby to raise who supports herself by selling her art work. A strict vegetarian who objects strenuously to the Me Decade, Sunny is shocked and disheartened to learn that Tom has never even heard of Bob Dylan.

Against his better judgement, Tom begins a friendship with Fin (Brian Austin Green), a top-notch surfer, but whom Tom initially regards as a pretty dumb fellow. It isn't long before Tom has a change of mind about Fin and the pair--in fashion similar to Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn--embark on a series of both riotous and serious adventures. Fin proves to be a fine lad, generous and even compassionate, who teaches the more rigid Tom how to loosen up and have fun and, above all, how to forget dwelling on his own troubles long enough to do something really interesting. By summer's end, Tom has learned to live, have fun, how to handle himself in a somewhat dangerous adventure and how to cope with girls while learning to handle his own adolescent sexual stirrings.

Slocum has done a bang-up job of showing his audience what it's like to be 14 and exploring the world around you. He quite impressively brings home the point that the early teenage years are a time when youngsters are searching for security, but when many don't have that security, being confronted by sudden upheaval or radical change. Slocum has gleaned touchingly convincing performances not only from young Michael Landes and Brian Austin Green, but from veteran actress Joanna Kerns (Maggie Seaver on TV's "Growing Pains"), simply wonderful as Tom's responsible, caring aunt. AN AMERICAN SUMMER is an overall delight, a serious, sensitive, high-spirited film that reveals Slocum to be a director of great promise. (Profanity, adult situations.) leave a comment