Snack Shack (2024)

Writer-director Adam Rehmeier has one hell of a filmography. He would have had one hell of a filmography if he'd stopped after his debut feature, The Bunny Game, an extreme and cruel movie that pushed things to the very edge of what is acceptable, and showed him to be as capable as he was fearless. But his last couple of movies have shown him to be brilliantly attuned to some lighter entertainment. Dinner In America is brilliantly witty and punk rock, and now we have Snack Shack, a coming-of-age movie that delivers all of the usual tropes with great energy, great lead performances, and an enjoyably eclectic soundtrack selection.

Conor Sherry and Gabriel LaBelle play A.J. and Moose, two best friends who want to spend the summer months making themselves plenty of money. To that end, they use their stash of savings, no small amount, to overpay for the temporary lease of the swimming pool snack shack. They soon start to see the earning potential of their new business endeavour though, but success depends on them being able to avoid the attention of some bullies and maintain their friendship as they start to vy for the attention of the lovely Brooke (Mika Abdalla).

There's nothing I can say about Snack Shack that won't have you thinking about at least a dozen other teen movies, but don't let that put you off. Familiarity breeds contempt, it's true, but it can also breed contentment, and that is the case here. The lead characters are smart, and lucky, as shown in the opening scenes, and they are allowed to feel like real, albeit quite cocky, teens. This is all thanks to a combination of the writing, direction, and savvy casting.

Sherry and LaBelle are both very good, and they're both different in ways that complement one another as best friends often do. Sherry plays his part a bit more quietly, while LaBelle is quick-talking and more bullish, his character happy to hit the ground running at every opportunity, making an inevitable mess as he gets three steps ahead of those he wants to leave in his wake. Abdalla is a great choice to play the young woman who captures their attention, ensuring that her character is as smart, cool, and pretty as needed to create a sense of competition, and tension, between A.J. and Moose. David Costabile and Gillian Vigman do decent work as concerned parents, Nick Robinson is very easy to like as Shane, a slightly older young man that A.J. looks up to, and everyone else fits perfectly in place, whether they're playing siblings, bullies, or one of the many customers queuing up to buy food and drink at the titular shack.

You can feel the sunshine, you can smell the water of the pool, and you can remember those times as a teen when it felt as if the weeks ahead were full of life-changing potential, because that is what every summer offered, and that's another big part of what Rehmeier gets right here. There are laughs, there are moments of tension, and there are one or two diversions into sadness, but each scene fits into one another as well as the sun, the splashing, and the hot dogs and cokes.

A wonderful teen movie, a wonderful summer movie, and another wonderful movie from a writer-director who seems to be creeping closer and closer to delivering an absolute modern classic at some point.

8/10

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The Fabelmans (2022)

A Steven Spielberg film, directed and co-written by him (with Tony Kushner, his regular collaborator over the past few years), and based on his life. The Fabelmans is, unsurprisingly, a film about falling in love with cinema, about how movies can reveal uncomfortable truths, and how people can be manipulated by the magic of movies. The surprising thing is that the film itself stops far short of greatness.

Gabriel LaBelle plays Sammy Fabelman (after Mateo Zoryan has depicted him as an even younger child), a young man who turns his passion for movies into a life-changing hobby that we all know will turn into a hugely successful career. His parents are played by Michelle Williams and Paul Dano, and there’s a friendly “uncle” (not actually related, just named as such as a term of endearment) played by Seth Rogen. There are other family members, but they’re background players, especially throughout a second half that shows Sammy being bullied by Logan Hall (Sam Rechner) and Chad Thomas (Oakes Fegley).

Very traditional in the way it all plays out, The Fabelmans is a nice film. Even the darker plot points (family issues, the antisemitism/bullying) are handled with great care, every main sequence more about appreciating the power of movies than it is about anything else. That’s to be expected, I guess, but it leaves you with a film that somehow feels less insightful than the excellent documentary on Spielberg from a few years ago. As Sammy immerses himself into movies and movie-making, viewers may find it far too easy to keep in mind that Spielberg is keeping himself well within his comfort zone. Even things that surely caused him pain in his life are made safer, more palatable, by his ability to put them in a movie, and that observation is spoken aloud within the film.

The cast all do a good job, with Dano and Williams real standouts. The former gives one of his typically restrained and controlled turns, in line with his good-hearted, but somewhat dull, character, and the latter gets to shine like the brightest star in the sky, her light casting a glow on the loving faces of the men in her life. LaBelle is a perfect stand-in for young Spielberg, Rechner is pretty good, and Fegley is a worryingly effective Chad, if you know what I mean. Chad’s gonna Chad. Chloe East and Isabelle Kusman have fun as two teenage girls who befriend our lead after a particularly rough encounter with his bullies, but their relative insignificance, compared to the affirmation he ends up getting from those who watch his films, feels as depressing as it is (probably) accurate.

The very end scene will leave many people smiling, but it’s the only moment that hints at how much better the whole thing could have been. It’s harder to join in with a celebration when some people are sobbing, and there’s only so much work that a John Williams score can do.

Slightly misjudged, slightly self-indulgent, slightly too . . . well, slight, The Fabelmans is still a good film, and Spielberg absolutely deserves to treat himself with this cinematic retelling of his youth, but it’s kind of like knowing how a magic trick works. You can still appreciate the skill, but you’ll never be as impressed and entertained as you were before you knew the mechanics of it.

7/10

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