By: Alex
From elementary school to high school, summer was a time to
be free from responsibility and do, literally, whatever I felt like doing that
day. As a college student, things are a little different now. I’m hanging onto
summer for dear life because I know this is one of the few I have left to enjoy. With a summer job and an internship, I’m already getting a taste of what
it’s like not having a summer vacation with complete
freedom. But even when the day comes where I have to spend my summers working
full time, I’ll always remember what it was like to be a teenager and enjoy the
little in-between time I have before I have to face reality and responsibility again
and move on with life. I’ve compiled a list of my favorite movies about summer,
sun, and most importantly, no responsibility.
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| Graphic by Alex |
Gidget (1959)- Seventeen-year-old
Frances Lawrence is on her last summer break before college. While her
girlfriends use the summer to search for the perfect boyfriend, she picks up a
surfboard and joins an all-male surfer gang, earning the nickname ‘Gidget’ (a
mashup of ‘girl’ and ‘midget’). With true girl-power, Gidget uses this summer
to ignore the impending threat of her future, forget responsibility and live her own life her way by being one of the boys.
The Graduate (1967)- I
used this movie in my last countdown because it’s my favorite, but I promise it
still fits. Faced with making a decision about his post-grad future that summer,
Ben has an affair with the worn-out (but still foxy) cougar, Mrs. Robinson,
while subsequently falling in love with her daughter, Elaine. Now Ben must
decide how to get rid of his old lover and start a life with his new soulmate. As
Ben figures it all out, we get plenty of footage, and montages with Simon &
Garfunkel tunes, of a toned and tanned Dustin Hoffman drifting in the pool with
blue water and a blazing sun.
Stand By Me (1986)- It’s
the last week of summer and Gordie and his friends hear that the body of a
missing boy lays somewhere in the woods of their town. With adolescence and the threat of middle
school looming over them, the boys assert their independence and take an
adventure through Castle Rock, Maine to find the body. In a weekend, Gordie,
Chris, Teddy and Vern have adventures and classic late-night talks and
storytelling with just the right mixture of innocence and wisdom.
The Sandlot (1993)-
Scotty Smalls moves to a new town in the summer of 1962, and joins a gang of
misfit ball players who meet everyday for the all-American, preteen-boy ritual
of baseball at a small field they call ‘the sandlot.’ As the summer gets hotter
and Scotty gets to know the kids he plays ball with, the boys start having
adventures that go beyond the sandlot, learning more about each other, life,
growing up, and girls (specifically Wendy Peffercorn).
Adventureland (2009)-
Jesse Eisenberg plays James, a geeky but accomplished newly college graduate
looking forward to a future at a prestigious grad school and a trip to Europe.
That summer, James finds out that his parents can no longer pay for his
endeavors, forcing him to take a job at a run down amusement park called Adventureland.
There, James learns more about life, the people around him, and himself than he
ever learned from his impressive college education, with advice and anecdotes
from his coworkers (among them being Kristen Stewart and Martin Starr) in a tone
of college-humor style cynicism and hilarity.
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