‘Snack Shack’ Is The Essential Summer Movie of 2024.

One of the best movies to come out during the beginning of the year is Adam Rehmeier’s ‘Snack Shack’, an old-fashioned coming-of-age dramedy set during Summer 1991. No matter the season, it is an indisputable fact that watching movies set in that season is the best way to get excited about the little things in life for the next few months. These are the movies that rather than talking about life, they’re more focused on making sure you feel it. It is a criminally underrated type of film and with ‘Snack Shack’, it’s not only one of the finest examples out there right now but it’s also the type of film that just makes you want to get the fuck up and want to sell dripping sodas and soggy hot dogs to whining customers with your best friend all summer long.

there are no spoilers in this review because i want you to check the movie out!

‘Snack Shack’ is one of those films where you can tell within the first half-hour, that the cast and crew probably had the time of their lives filming this movie. It’s a Summer they will never forget and it’s a quality that radiates through the screen. Just about any scene from the film instantly puts you right next to it’s characters and feel whatever they are feeling. It’s due to a number of things, the great attention to detail and how the characters point out things that feel natural and authentic like the fact that floor of the shack is sticky when they first get there and how the refrigerator smells. Of course, on the other side of that coin, you also get to feel the breeze of walking down the street on a Summer day, the light breeze at 2am or jumping into the pool, wet hair touching your neck, the smell of hot dogs and and beer, it’s a pure representation of a youthful Summer. Another aspect of the film that puts you in their place is the fact that they are young and just about everything is a big deal when you’re at that age. Experiencing a mixture of emotions about the different people in your life. Wanting to make your parents proud, wanting to feel independent, wanting to chase life and turn lemon into lemonade, these guys might be fourteen according to the film and it’s rather comical but they represent a good chunk of just about any twenty-year-old-something living in 2024 and for that hour and forty-five minutes, we’re living vicariously through them and it’s just fantastic.

The film is also quite dependent on a few things, namely it’s leading duo, camerawork and script. You might think, doesn’t every movie depend on those? You would be right but it’s the way they’re used that makes this film work to the level that it does. The camerawork is an unsung hero in these types of movies, there are multiple shots of A.J. and Moose just walking around different parts of town that make you feel as if you’re right there with them and it’s truly a credit to the subtle shot composition and the captivating actors. This is also done very well when they’re operating the titular snack shack with these great panning shots which amp up the intensity of a shot while keeping it fun and humorous. Conor Sherry and Gabriel LaBelle play off of each other perfectly. Sherry, relatively new to the scene is very natural and subtle with his performance, you can always tell what he’s thinking without the script needing him to explicitly say it. He’s more muted and anxious as opposed to Gabriel LaBelle who commands the screen anytime he’s on it. Truth be told, my inner ‘The Fabelmans’ stan was the majority of the reason why this film was on my radar at all. Coming off that Spielbergian awe and wonder, LaBelle finds himself not necessarily letting loose but taking on a whole new speed and rhythm. From his incessant swearing, physicality and demeanour he becomes the perfect foil to Sherry. It’s almost crazy to say but there is even a level of experience in his performance that brings just an added layer to certain scenes whether it’s an inflection in his voice or a face he pulls of, he knows just what the scene needs and that could be him and director Rehmeier communicating perfectly or him being the lead actor on a Spielberg set.

It should also be said that as hilarious and heated the film gets, it packs quite an emotional punch in it’s third act. It’s the subtle seeds planted in the beginning to come to fruition in a truly surprising way while still feeling natural. There is a scene with Sherry’s A.J. and his parents that genuinely got to me because it was a question for the character that crossed my mind and the film answered it beautifully with this scene. Nick Robinson was a delightful surprise, there was something almost surreal about him being the older mentor type of friend seeing as just a couple years ago he was in his coming-of-age film, ‘Love, Simon’ and then a decade ago in ‘The Kings of Summer’. He gets along great with Sherry and LaBelle and leaves quite an impression overall. Mika Abdalla plays the love interest who causes some tension between the two guys. Her character Brooke is involved quite heavily in the story but as a character, she didn’t quite stand out but the chemistry between her and Sherry is fantastic. A.J.’s parents played by David Costabile and Gillian Vigman are great, their roles seem one-dimensional at first but I was truly surprised to see how their involvement would play out later on, especially in the touching final moments of the film.

Overall, ‘Snack Shack’ is one hundred percent the film I will be recommending to anyone I know. It’s the perfect Summer flick and it is a goddamn shame that it was buried in it’s release because if you love film at all, if you love Summer and if you love comedies, ‘Snack Shack’ is a guaranteed win.