'Snack Shack' has taste but no flavor
Paramount
The first time I saw “Adventureland,” it didn’t feel special. Fun and funny and sweet, yes, but also a series of coming-of-age beats. It took another viewing or two — followed by like 10 more since then — to absorb its personalized magic, its essential characters, its lines and moments. What once felt routine crystallized into classic.
It’s hard to imagine the same happening for “Snack Shack,” which is definitely another “one wild summer” movie, and that’s about all there is to say about that.
In 1991 Nebraska, 14-year-olds A.J. (Conor Sherry) and Moose (Gabriel LaBelle, in an inspired inversion of his “The Fabelmans” demeanor) never met a money-making scheme they wouldn’t try, whether it’s sneaking away from a class field trip at the zoo to bet on horses, making their own beer, or, hence the title, taking over a rundown pool stand for the financial potential of big markups on candy and hot dogs. It’s just the sort of setting that could anchor a sunny spree of adolescent misadventures, at least when A.J. doesn’t have to mow the lawn (cue allergy-induced sneezing) and Moose isn’t talking faster than even the most sugar-powered tween customer at the shack. Add Brooke (Mika Abdalla), who’s living next to A.J. and working as a lifeguard and maybe interested in one or both of the guys, and things could get totally epic.
Except they don’t. Though writer-director Adam Rehmeier gives “Snack Shack” the chaotic, manic energy of a youth filled with emotional and actual irresponsibility, the movie either has nothing to find or just doesn’t look hard enough. The teenage pursuit of swagger isn’t masking anything here (it’s surprising that these schemers aren’t big “Saved by the Bell” fans, considering Zack’s never-ending business efforts and confidence as a mask for fear), and mixing the aggressiveness of “Project X” with the codependence of “Superbad” doesn’t automatically spark experiences that become new. “Snack Shack” is really missing a Sam Rockwell-like character a la “The Way, Way Back,” which was just nodding to Bill Murray anyway. Everyone has been young, so how do you turn rebelling against parents and psychotic bullies and night swimming into a new generation’s chance to feel seen?
Well, for one, setting the movie in 1991 isn’t exactly catering to an audience who hasn’t been here before, and the casting of actors in their early 20s, though far from the first time that’s happened, only further makes some of these moments lose impact. Abdalla also never suggests that Brooke is a real person rather than just a vague character needed for a story as standard as this one. Brooke constantly calling A.J. “shit pig” is the opposite of charming.
For what it’s worth, “Snack Shack” contains an authentic crassness, and outside of dropping EMF’s “Unbelievable” and parental fear about the dangerous influence of neon shirts, the movie doesn’t seem desperate to remind us what year this is. (As opposed to the similarly forgettable, ‘90s-set “The To-Do List.”) It’s also refreshing that A.J. and Moose aren’t nerds; they stand up for themselves but also can’t avoid inevitable awkwardness seeping in. (A.J. slipping down a few stairs rings truer than most of what surrounds the brief moment.)
A somewhat surprising theatrical release, “Snack Shack” has more to say about entrepreneurship than friendship (the love triangle here is a long way from clicking), and that isn’t close to enough to make its ordinariness transcend. Sometimes average is just average.
C
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