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Lazy, Hazy 'Summer Nights'

Twitter’s favorite actor Timothée Chalamet breaks bad in the summer of 1991 in Elijah Bynum’s directorial debut, “Hot Summer Nights.” That could be enough to get the young actor’s newly found fanbase to the movies for this stylistic mixed-bag.

Bynum plays his film as both a coming-of-age fairytale and a sweaty fever dream, keeping things lively with visuals while skimping on story. The problem isn’t that “Hot Summer Nights” is a been-there, done-that cocktail of teenage tropes and various movies, but rather that it doesn’t do anything interesting with them. “Hot Summer Nights” is more of a re-hash than anything memorably fun.

Chalamet stars as Daniel, whose father recently passed away. Understandably, Daniel is having a hard time coping with the devastating loss, so his mother sends him to his aunt’s house on Cape Cod for the summer. He gets a job at a convenience store, where he meets Hunter Strawberry (Alex Roe), the local drug-dealer and infamous bad boy, known for selling weed and bedding most of the women around Cape Cod. Hunter bursts in the store, hiding from the cops and asks Daniel to hide the weed he has on his person.

Quickly, Daniel and Hunter form a friendship, of sorts, and Daniel decides he wants to be a part of Hunter’s business. Hunter initially laughs at the idea because Daniel’s unassuming appearance doesn’t strike him as someone who is ready for this line of work. Without much convincing, Hunter obliges Daniel’s request and the two form a lucrative business relationship around town.

As these things go, things get complicated when Daniel starts to fall for McKayla (Maika Monroe) and Hunter is being pursued by Dex (Emory Cohen), who has a bit more menace and clout within the drug business. Dex seems to have been added to the story as a simple plot device to provide an obvious obstacle for Daniel and Hunter; Bynum doesn’t do much with the one-note character. As Daniel gets deeper into Hunter's seedy world, “Hot Summer Nights” grows tiresome, shifting to drowning in familiarity as opposed to merely treading in it.

Chalamet is fine here portraying the innocent guy gone bad who finds himself in over his head when he just wanted to shake things up. His Oscar-nominated turn in last year’s “Call Me by Your Name” was the kind of revelatory performance any actor dreams of giving, and here he channels some of that aloof awkwardness and naïveté to lesser effect. "Hot Summer Nights" was shot before "Call Me by Your Name" premiered at Sundance last year, but the actor remains an exciting one to watch.

The film's hazy, humid style keeps things aesthetically interesting, but Bynum leans far too heavily on films he must admire in an effort to create his narrative. If the movie played like a nostalgic trip through the 90s it would have been a bit more successful, but as a scrambled homage it almost plays as parody.