Snack Shack
★★★½
If movies have taught me anything, it is that it was way better to be young in the early nineties than it is today. Take Adam Rehmeier’s word for it. The writer-director paints a broad portrait of juvenile hijinks and intoxicating teenage freedom in his latest feature “Snack Shack,” which cuts with an aching nostalgia and sentimentality specifically because it doesn’t force it. It’s all in the vibes. Standing in the back of a moving pickup truck, scarfing down fast food with the warm night air rippling through your hair. The refreshing shimmer of the public pool combatting the summer’s sticky heat. Cheap hot dogs and loud boomboxes and adolescent independence. The feeling is almost palpable.
AJ (Conor Sherry) and Moose (Gabriel LaBelle) are lifelong best friends. Moneymaking schemes and reckless behaviour put them on their parents’ bad side, so in an effort to rake in legitimate cash all summer long, the pair bid on, and win, temporary ownership of the community pool’s snack shack. For two fourteen year-olds, solely operating a busy food stand for an entire summer would be adventure enough. But there’s a new lifeguard, Brooke (Mika Abdalla), who becomes a source of conflict for the two boys who both have their eyes set on her.
Dipping its toe into the familiar sub-genre of summer coming-of-age comedies, “Snack Shack” hits expected beats and makes anticipated moves, but this is precisely where it finds its easygoing comfort. AJ is the introverted straight-man to Moose’s frenzied partier, and it’s a dynamic that is tried and true if not a bit worn down. But Rehmeier’s screenplay offers the boys enough relatability and wit to combat this. The “longtime friends with opposing personalities whose conflict over a girl reveals their long-held gripes with one another” trope is no less effective on its thousandth iteration, as long as it’s handled with appropriate sincerity and care.
And performed this skillfully. Conor Sherry is likeable, sympathetic and delightfully cringe-inducing as the sheepish AJ, and he manages a remarkable balancing act by not overdelivering on the character’s introverted awkwardness. What could have been farce is handled with surprising delicacy. Gabriel LaBelle, meanwhile, presents a complete 180 turn from his tender star-making debut as Sammy Fabelman, crafting a wonderfully crass alpha-dog persona with Moose. He’s absolutely electric, a complete scene-stealer. And as the ultimate girl-next-door whose flirtations with both boys leads to an expected rift, Mika Abdalla exudes an easygoing coolness and charming confidence. She rounds out an admittedly flat character with shades of an unspoken sadness.
But if “Snack Shack” cannot be credited with entirely original or multifaceted characterizations, it can at least be applauded for its excellent stylistic flourishes. Whether it’s the retro title drop — fitted with old-school trademark credits when it arrives nearly twenty minutes into the film — or its upbeat soundtrack of pop classics, the film maintains its era in form as well as narrative. Make no mistake, it still sports a sleek contemporary aesthetic, and bends to many of the conventions of modern filmmaking, but it’s hard not to feel euphorically transported when the boys meet their first snack shack rush to the bumping tune of The Human Beinz’s “Nobody But You.”
Ultimately, Rehmeier’s film succeeds for its evocative atmosphere. It captures the infectious thrill of teenage rebellion and budding infatuations, and sets it against a time and place that audiences will either remember wistfully or long to have lived through. You can almost smell the chlorine through the screen. Its humour is quite hit-or-miss in its barrage of expletives — though it, too, feels done in service of tone-setting as it establishes the shared language of teen boy culture — and a plot deviation in the home stretch seems to aim for an emotional poignancy the film is ill-equipped to handle, but it almost doesn’t matter. “Snack Shack” is a fun 90s romp, rewarding in its comfortable familiarity, and supported by truly stellar performances. You know exactly what kind of movie you’re watching when the muscular twenty-something LaBelle is being passed off as fourteen.