Written and directed by Lankyboy aka Kurtis David Harder and Noah Kentis
Starring Rory J. Saper, Maddie Phillips, Chris Ball, Dylan Playfair and Dion Arnold
Running time: 1 hour and 20 minutes

by Emily Maesar

If you want chill vibes with a bit of queer content and an ambiguously happy ending, then I’ve got the flick for you. 

Kurtis David Harder’s and Noah Kentis’s Summerland [not to be confused with Jessica Swale’s film of the same title that came out just two months before] is about three friends who are trying to make their way to the titular music festival. Two of them have secrets, while one is just trying to escape. Bray (Chris Ball) is excited about meeting up with a guy at the festival, while Oliver (Rory J. Saper) is looking for one last hurrah before he gets sent back to England. 

However, a wrench gets thrown into both of their plans when Oliver’s girlfriend, Stacey (Maddie Phillips), decides to join them. For Bray, the issue is that he’s been pretending to be Stacey so the guy in question will talk to him. And for Oliver? Well, he hasn’t told her that he’s getting deported yet. And thus a comedy of errors occurs - in an RV as they travel the west coast. 

Summerland is a quiet film, although I’m not sure that was the intent. It has all the makings of a buck wild road trip movie, but it never quite gets there. There’s some drugs, a pit stop in Vegas and an RV that swaps drivers more times than any character changes clothes. Literally. But it’s mute and tame in a way that other films in its genre are not. 

Now, I don’t think that’s a bad thing. In fact, there’s a lot of really nice moments between characters that are the meat of the film. It’s real in these moments, and makes it feel like this might be what my friends and I would actually get up to in the same circumstances. I like who these characters are and I understand their motives. Or, at least, I understand Oliver and Stacey’s. Bray? That’s my hiccup with the film, but I’ll circle back to him in a moment. 

I want to take a moment to talk about Oliver and Stacey. They seem like they’ve been together for a while, and Oliver has not only failed to tell her that he’s being forced out of the country… he’s led her to believe that they were gonna move in together. And that’s where Stacey gets all of my sympathy and love in this film. I know what it’s like to have a family who loves and cares about you, but the desire to start your own life? It’s just so high that you’re willing to look past the impossible. It helps that Maddie Phillips is truly great in a role that isn’t giving her a lot. I’m excited to watch her in Teenage Bounty Hunters in the next few weeks of quar. 

Oliver and Stacey’s relationship is so interesting to me. Or, it is in theory. But the film is painfully unfocused. It wants to touch on three different storylines that they’ve made intersect in really natural ways… but refuses to follow through on them. Simply: this film is too short. It’s too willing to wrap everything up in a neat bow, when it hasn’t even begun to scratch the surface of who any of these characters are - or what their relationships are like.

Now’s as good a time as any. Let’s talk about Bray and his very mid-2000s storyline. Bray is doing what we on the internet would call “a catfish.” In fact, the film opens up with the audience learning that he’s catfishing, who he’s catfishing and where he’ll reveal that he’s been catfishing. These are all great stakes and it’s an economic use of storytelling, however, it’s not the trope for me. It’s a popular one in a lot of romance, but I always find it unsavory. It’s fine if it works for you, but I also don’t think it’s done particularly well here.

The stakes have somehow never been lower, even when the reveal happens. It doesn’t feel like anything has really shifted at all. Bray hasn’t changed; he doesn’t learn or internalize that what he was doing was wrong. In fact, when he visits Oliver at the end of the film, he cracks jokes about how he’s still convinced that the guy in question is gay. 

All-in-all, Summerland is plotted like it’s a student film. It’s shot beautifully, and the performances are solid - but it lacks heart. And the only character who has it in spades, Stacey, isn’t even the focus and is barely in the film.

There’s chill vibes all around and I appreciate it for that, but if you’re looking for a queer coming-of-age comedy? This just ain’t it, folks.

Available to watch on demand September 14.