Age of Summer

Literally dozens of coming of age movies set on Southern California beaches have been made since the surf culture took off in the 1960's. This one features a 13 year old boy nicknamed Minnesota (Percy Hynes White of The Gifted) who recently moved to LA and is training to be a junior life guard. He struggles to adapt to the rigors of the job and to be accepted amongst the slightly older, cooler locals also training. His fancy bike is stolen and he embarks on a quest to get it back they leads to some interesting if slightly weird plot twists.

There was an annoying niggle with the part Diamaid Murtagh played as the Australian surf lifesaving coach. Having lived 2 years in, and travelled frequently to, Australia, I can tell you that no Australian uses their slang words jammed awkwardly back to back into the same sentence as the script writers manage with this character. It's as if they looked up a book of Aussie slang and inserted a slang word in at every opportunity. It made for a lampoonish dialogue to anyone familiar with Australians.

This is most definitely a B grade movie with only average acting and not a strong plot line. Percy Hynes White does an OK job but comes across as a scrawny fish-out-of-water in the tough physical world of surf lifesaving as does his nerdy friend Woods (Jake Ryan). There is the obligatory awkward first relationship scenes that actually were quite well done. Compared to others in this genre, it's a very average movie.