Hot Summer Nights (2017) - Chalamet shines in Bynum's far from profound debut

♥♥

 

The smooth, hairless visage of twinkie headliner Timothée Chalamet with his signature lazy-horny stare, against a colorful horizon make up this stylized poster for Elijah Bynum's Hot Summer Nights

A young man is to spend the summer with his aunt in Cape Cod, Massachusetts in 1991, and there he soon becomes a business partner and friend of the local pusher.

 

Hot Summer Nights is written and directed by debuting Elijah Bynum (One Dollar (2018, TV-series), writer)).

Right before lecturing the world on the tragic consequences of drug dependence (in Beautiful Boy (2018)), the then fumbling Timothée Chalamet (Wonka (2023)), - yet before his breakthrough in Call Me By Your Name (2017), - just wanted to entertain with drugs viewed as a product like any other. There is a vibe of braindead consumerism about this film, which is thickly sauced in hit songs and unnecessary narration (from a random other boy in the vacation spot apparently...) Another part of the vibe is the way the young stars are peddled as irresistibly sexy by Bynum and cinematographer Javier Julia (Argentina, 1985 (2022)).

The attempt hardly succeeds in a dour and unexciting story that is lacking in contemporary relevance. Despite the sexy young Chalamet this is a poor call of a film. 

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: Unknown, projected 3 mil. $

Box office: 246k $ (international gross only); 300k $ projected final gross

= Box office disaster (projected return of 0.1 times its cost)

[Hot Summer Nights premiered 13 March (South by South West Film Festival) and runs 107 minutes. Shooting took place in Georgia and Massachusetts. The film's North-American gross has been kept secret, - it must be tiny, - and the film only has public gross numbers from 3 markets: Russia with 141k $, South Korea with 89k $ and Lithuania with 15k $. If made on a conservatively put 3 mil. $ budget, the film would rank as a box office disaster. Bynum returned with Magazine Dreams (2023). Chalamet returned in Lady Bird (2017); Maika Monroe (Villains (2019)) in The Scent of Rain & Lightning (2017); and Alex Roe (The 5th Wave (2016)) in Forever My Girl (2018)). Hot Summer Nights is rotten at 44 % with a 5.20/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

 

What do you think of Hot Summer Nights?