During their last days of summer and childhood -- the weekend before middle school begins -- four girls struggle with the harsh truths of growing up and embark on a mysterious adventure.... (Full plot summary below)
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During their last days of summer and childhood -- the weekend before middle school begins -- four girls struggle with the harsh truths of growing up and embark on a mysterious adventure.
Leave your thoughts about Summering.
| TheWrapWilliam BibbianiJames Ponsoldt (“The Spectacular Now”) keeps his film permanently trapped in a liminal space between childhood and adolescence, where magic is real but intangible and largely metaphoric. |
| ColliderErick MassotoSummering provides the perfect territory for whoever wants to feel nostalgic about childhood, or just wants to enjoy spending time with kids trading clever banter. But the journey gets a little less sweet once you realize that the movie lets go of basic logic just so its main characters can have a bit of fun and bring their journey full circle. |
| Los Angeles TimesChris HewittThere’s a sense that nature is speaking to the girls, perhaps because they’re still clinging to an age when imagination trumps reality, whatever that is. They’re also capable of seeing magical things that the adults in their lives no longer notice. |
| Austin ChronicleMatthew MonagleWhile James Ponsoldt (The Spectacular Now, The End of the Tour) authors a slightly uneven depiction of childhood, Summering still captures the gentle doom of being aware that your life is about change forever. |
| Screen DailyWendy IdeKey to the film’s appeal is the way that the friendship between the four girls, Dina, Lola, Daisy (Lisa Barnett), and Mari (Eden Grace Redfield), is persuasively brought to life. |
| Rolling StoneDavid FearSummering works better as a mood than it does a movie, succeeding in channeling a certain feeling of transition despite ambling, or occasionally stumbling though more traditional kids-flicks narrative beats. |
| ReelViewsJames BerardinelliOlder viewers may lose patience with the thinness of the narrative. Nostalgia might keep them watching but there’s only so far that can go and 90 minutes is too much to ask without the correspondingly intriguing story that Summering lacks. |
| The A.V. ClubLeigh MonsonSummering may be a breezy little trip through the nostalgia of youth, but its stabs at deeper meaning are woefully immature. |
| VarietyGuy LodgeNostalgia may be the strongest emotion engendered by this breeze-blown dandelion seed of a film, which nods to the bittersweet complexities of growing up and confronting adulthood, but never gets as far as fully dramatizing them. |
| The PlaylistJason BaileyAll in all, Summering is a very nice movie – sweet, affectionate, nostalgic, harmless – so it’s tempting to give it a pass. But “nice” and “compelling,” sadly, are not the same thing. |
