Summer of 69

In an effort to land the guy that she's been pining after since grade school, Abby hires a local stripper named Santa Monica to teach her everything she needs to know about dating, sex, and being confident in herself.

Abby Flores is a socially awkward high school senior with a long-standing crush on a boy in her class named Max. Years ago, in grade school, Abby had a brief window where Max might’ve been hers. But Mercedes stepped into the gap, and ever since, she and Max have been together, relegating Abby to only wistfully-watching from the sidelines. For years, it seemed like this was going to be a life-long sentence for poor Abby. But then Max and Mercedes break up, and now Abby has her chance.

It’s on like Donkey Kong.

Unfortunately, Abby hears through the grapevine that Max is ‘obsessed’ with the 69 sex position, and despite having the internet, and a lucrative side hustle as a game streamer, she apparently has no idea what 69 means, just that it's sex stuff. As a result, she worries that her own lack of sexual experience, not to mention her honestly kind of frightening complete lack of knowledge about sex in general, will mean that Max won't like her.

Desperate for help, Abby inexplicably decides to visit Diamond Dolls, which just may be the ugliest, most low-rent, right-off-the-highway, janky local strip club I've ever seen, and I'm saying this as someone who once ate the wings at the buffet at Jumbo's Clown Room, and this was back before the turn of the century too, when it was still real sketchy, not kitschy. And sure, part of this is because the set that the film uses as Diamond Dolls is so incredibly cheap, even for the film as clearly low budget as this one is, but damn... it looks like it was a public restroom not too long ago. Wash your hands when you get home, Abby.

Anyway, this is where Abby meets Santa Monica, Diamond Dolls' premiere stripper, and after a few rejections of the call, Santa Monica finally agrees to tutor young Abby in the fine art of Voulez-vous coucher avec moi (ce soir), as the French say. Santa Monica agrees to this because she thinks of Diamond Dolls as her home, and club owner Betty as a mother figure, and the club is in danger of being shut down due to owing $20,000 for something to somebody, which they need to pay in a week, or else. And without a bunch of kids to stage a talent show or something, Santa Monica has few other options if she wants to save the trashy dump. And it just so happens that Abby has offered to pay Santa Monica the exact amount she needs, which she earned from streaming video games. Even better, if she can pull it off, Santa Monica will become a co-owner of Diamond Dolls, and all its presumably myriad staph infections lurking in the corners.

Unfortunately, a scumbag sexpest rival club owner named Rick Richards is going to end up as the owner of the club if they don't pay! So Santa Monica and Abby get to work, and a hilarious montage ensues!

Abby and Santa Monica end up becoming pals, bonding over clear plastic stripper heels, dildos, pole dancing, and the movie Risky Business. Soon enough, not only is Abby learning how to be more confident from Santa Monica, but Santa Monica is also learning to be more confident from Abby too.

Y'see, Santa Monica has her big high school reunion coming up, and she is really nervous about going, because apparently she doesn't have any social media. She's hesitant to go a high school gymnasium, hurriedly draped in crepe paper streamers right after Basketball practice ended, and shout over music that's a decade plus out of date, to a sad little collection of people she hasn't had a reason nor the desire to talk to about literally anything in a decade, that she's a pole dancer in the grungiest strip club along the interstate near the airport. The reason why she's embarrased is because she was once a "gifted" kid (maybe the most believable part of the movie), and in her most dear, and most precious of dreams, Santa Monica would like to be able to walk into that gym, redolent as it is with the malodorous odor of gym socks and glory day desperation, and tell this unremarkable gaggle of commision-based salespeople, middle managers, office admins, MLM and/or Essential Oil obsessed wine moms, day traders, and small business owners freshly pardoned by Trump for their role in the Jan 6th Coup, that she is the PART OWNER of the grungiest strip club along the interstate near the airport.

'Ware, fair Icarus! For shouldst thou fly too high, thy wings shall melt!

Unfortunately, none of that matters, because Santa Monica has a brief moment of being a responsible adult, and tells the completely hapless uber-virgin Abby that... y'know... maybe she isn't ready for sex yet, and that perhaps she should have more than a toddler's understanding of not just the act of procreation, but what it means to be in a healthy relationship, before rushing out there and offering herself up to a teenage boy that has shown zero sexual interest in her in the entire time since they both went through puberty, especially since she clearly believes that once she and whatever his name was have taken the ol' skin boat to tuna town, she and him will then have the kind of love that lasts a lifetime.

This upsets Abby, because Abby is a big dumb horny baby, so in her anger, she lashes out and reveals to Santa Monica that she doesn't actually have the $20,000. This is super shocking for Santa Monica to hear, who completely believed that a 17 year old from the suburbs would totally have 20 grand in cash sitting in a shoebox, and that her parents wouldn't just call the cops once they found out that she gave all of it to a stripper for sex lessons.

After almost nearly a full week, shockingly, their friendship may be at an end...

It's at this point that the plot of Summer of 69 starts to unravel wildly, featuring low budget versions of wacky parties and wild running about, all while desperately trying to center the idea that honesty is the best policy, and then it really does end with a bunch of underage teens holding a talent show in a cruddy little cinderblock strip club located in the far corner of a strip mall parking lot just off the airport, all in order to raise enough money to keep their local trashhole titty bar open.

Summer of 69 is an attempt to weld some of the typical, sincere, saccharine-sweet, platonic rom-com tropes onto a rauchy teen sex comedy, but the fact that the film feels like it was made in a weekend–and was clearly banking on "finding the film in post" but once they got into the editing booth, discovered they had nothing to work with–means the end result is a weird hodge-podge of half-hearted nothing. It's not sweet enough. It's not rauchy enough. It's not "anything" enough.

Except bad, it's got plenty of that.

In a lot of ways, this film reminded me of No Hard Feelings. As in, the story is incomplete, it doesn't connect, it's generally too easily resolved, and worst of all, it clearly wants to be shocking and edgy, but it's also very obviously afraid of getting too wild, so it not only never crosses the line, most of the time, it's so far away from the line, it can't even see it. The whole film feels like its number one rule was to not offend anyone, which is absolutely ridiculous as it's a film about a stripper teaching an underage teenager about sex. And as a result, it never embraces it's raunchy and ridiculous subject matter. It certainly never pushes any envelopes. It's nothing but this toothless "comedy" that barely lands any jokes, and unfortunately, unlike No Hard Feelings, it doesn't have a fantastically talented, charismatic, and also very naked Jennifer Lawrence to carry it at least part of the way.

And look, speaking of naked, I'm not demanding to see Chloe Fineman's goodies or anything, but this is the thing... she's playing a stripper... who doesn't take her top off... Is she actually a stripper if she doesn't get naked in any way?

This all adds up the big question... Why would you even want to make a comedy about a stripper teaching a teenager how to have sex, if you're also unwilling to offend people AND there's no nudity?

What's the point?

Plus, I am hard-pressed to come up with a film reference that might seem more possibly out-of-date than Risky Business. I can't really articulate why either, so I apologize for that, but to me, for whatever reason, bringing up Risky Business felt like bringing up something like the tv show Silver Spoons. Yeah, I guess that's a thing that people used to like and talk about...?

How long has this script been sitting in someone's drawer?

Summer of 69 is obviously part of the process where Chloe Fineman pays her dues in some shitty little comedies, while trying find her place outside of Saturday Night Live, but after watching this, I don't know if she has one. This was bad, and she's a big part of the reason why.

Thumbs down. Way down. In fact, I'm sorry I even brought this crappy film up.