Coming of age films are a hard genre to get right. Sure, there are a ton that do it well, but to be able to nail something that gets the correct tone of a John Hughes film or Me and Earl is very rare. A lot of people try to force too much knowledge into a compact story in order to make it a retrospective teaching lesson from their youth to be passed down to kids of a certain age, and that’s where they may fall apart. It’s even harder when you put it in an era that doesn’t necessarily resonate with the current generation, like the 80s. Yet, Snack Shack fucking nails it.
To open up with two kids at a race track chain smoking cigs and drinking beers is a hell of a way to start this film. There are questions we have, but the fast-pacedness of it just draws us in for the immediate ride so we don’t ask questions while we watch A.J. (Conor Sherry) and Moose (an awesome Gabriel LaBelle) let it ride in a fun way, very reminiscent of Richard Dreyfuss. Then it ensues with pure chaos as we follow two fifteen year olds going into their freshman year of high school summer, trying to scheme their way to make a ton money in small-town Nebraska (near the Iowa border) through their own micro brewery, address painting, and eventually local pool snack shack enterprises. During the course of the summer there is love, heart break, and maturation as they embark on the early days of latter teenhood.
Pretty run of the mill, but what makes this film pretty spectacular is how engaging it is from start to finish. I found myself giddily giggling the entire time on the flight while I watched it from the childish and relatable jokes per minute. The facial and body reactions Sherry and LaBelle create are exactly what being a teenager was like. It’s engaging as hell, pretty to look at, and just really relatable. The color palette of the 80s lends a massive hand here while also not feeling dated - which is wild considering how they could have gone the way of saying all of the slurs and terrible things people used to freely spit in those days, but completely avoid it. Nearly two hours for this film may be a lot, but at the same time, the journey was completely worth the ride. This film fucking rules and while it’s hard to see, I hope it gets a wider release soon.