One Crazy Summer

Plot summary

Hoops McCann, a recent high school graduate, fails to get a basketball scholarship, disappointing his parents. He hopes to be admitted to the Rhode Island School of Design, and must write and illustrate a love story for his application. He joins with his friends, siblings George and Squid Calamari, to spend the summer on the island of Nantucket, Massachusetts. En route, they pick up a young rock singer named Cassandra Eldridge, who is pursued by a motorcycle gang at the time. Once on the island, Hoops and George, along with his island friends the Stork twins and Ack-Ack Raymond, must help Cassandra save her grandfather's house from the greedy Beckersted Family. Along the way, Hoops must find a way to write his cartoon love story.

With the prize returned and the house spared, Hoops and Cassandra engage in a kiss, and she gives him a love story for his application. In the final scene, George's uncle Frank (having been driven insane every summer for trying to win a $1 million prize from a radio contest) finally wins, but his phone gets disconnected and his prize is given away to someone else; he snaps and promptly uses a rocket launcher to blow up the radio station, just as the Stork twins arrive and head to the fiery remains to roast marshmallows.

Cast

Soundtrack

Production

Several locations on Cape Cod, Massachusetts were used for the film: Pope John Paul II High School (as Generic High School), Hyannis West Elementary School (as Generic Elementary), the Woods Hole, Martha's Vineyard And Nantucket Steamship Authority ferry dock in Woods Hole, where the characters board the ferry, and the motorcycle gang leader jumps his motorcycle into the water. The internal scene of the gas station bathroom were shot on a stage built in the MBL Club in Woods Hole. The inside of General Raymond's Army-Navy store is Mass Bay Company, located at 595 Main Street, Hyannis, MA. The Stork brothers' gas station is the (then-Amoco) located at 1098 Main Street in Dennis, MA.

Hoops McCann is named after the protagonist in Steely Dan's song "Glamour Profession" from the Gaucho album, who is introduced as a basketball aficionado.

Savage Steve Holland was reportedly upset with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert's criticism of his earlier film Better Off Dead, which led to the gag with the two bunnies that get blown up at the end of the movie who resemble the movie critics.

Reception

Nina Darnton of The New York Times wrote, "In spite of the director's flair for zany humor, this film is just absurd." Pat Graham of the Chicago Reader found it "Not a bad film, and certainly more polished than Holland's Better Off Dead debut, though it's marred by unevenness and the director's ineradicable penchant for infantile clowning." The film maintains a 60% score at Rotten Tomatoes.