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“Sherriff, we want results! Things like this aren’t supposed to happen in our town!”
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And with that, we get to the heart of A Plumm Summer, this week’s inductee into the Cynical Cinema Schmaltzy Claptrap Hall of Fame. Things like this aren’t supposed to happen in small town America! Actually, things like this ought not to be noticed in small town America, and ought not to happen on DVD. But this one IS happening on DVD, May 5th from Paramount Home Entertainment. And it’s OK. In that it is entirely unapologetic for being schamaltzy claptrap. And on some level, I respect that and it makes me happy.
However, on another level, this movie does NOT make me happy. You see, they found this little kid (Owen Pearce) who is staggeringly adorable. And then they made a movie. No question, Rocky (Owen Pearce) is an adorable cutie. Which is…well…adorable and cute. But not enough to carry a movie. So we need a story. Rocky’s favourite TV program is an insipid kids’ show called “Froggy-Doo”. Froggy-Doo is a marionette (puppet) frog that talks to Viv (Brenda Strong) and Happy Herb (Henry Winkler). Sidebar!
Henry Winkler, I believe, is really trying to create a new persona later in his career. And I have a theory about it. He was, of course, most famous as The Fonz on Happy Days. The Fonz was a ladies’ man, a tough guy in a leather jacket, and I’m certain that while playing Arthur Fonzarelli, Henry Winkler could get laid whenever, wherever he liked. Then, my theory goes, he got married. And those other girls were still out there, all the time, tempting him incessantly. Desperate to remain faithful to his wife, Winkler went out of his way to erase the Fonz from the memories of women the world over so they would stop tempting him. And he took every single wimpy, sad-sack weirdo part that was offered to him from that day on.
Winkler’s role in A Plumm Summer is no exception. He is one of the weirdest, most pathetic, sad-sack characters ever seen in a children’s film. Happy Herb, you see, is not only the host of the Froggy-Doo show, he is also the husband of his co-host, Viv, and the best friend of Froggy-Doo. The puppet. In real life. He is like a seventy-year-old man who still has an imaginary friend. And when that imaginary friend is kidnapped, he really does go to pieces. For real. And that is the plot of A Plumm Summer. Froggy-Doo, the puppet, is kidnapped.
Like Santa Claus, little Rocky believes with all his heart in Froggy-Doo. Which means that he is the only one who can actually identify with creepy ol’ Happy Herb, who actually has a full, furnished bedroom in his house FOR the puppet. It also means that Rocky’s older brother Elliot (Chris Kelly) makes it his mission this summer to find the stolen puppet, make Rocky happy, and accomplish something for once in his life.
And so begins one of those standard, boring coming-of-age-in-the-sixties movies which are so prevalent of late. Elliot is the central character, and he sets about solving the mystery with the aid of the Girl Next Door Haley (Morgan Flynn), upon whom he of course has a crush. In the meantime, he must deal with his drunken deadbeat of a dad (William Baldwin), who comes home smashed and spends the family’s money on booze so they are in danger of losing the house. The stuff with the girl, and the stuff with the drunken dad, are dealt with briefly, and in painfully saccharine scenes. (One particular scene, between Elliot and his father in a jail, is a serious contender for Most Overacted Silliest “Dramatic” Scene Of All Time.)
This movie, really, is about the search for Froggy-Doo. It tries to use that detective story as the plot by which it tells the “real” story - the drunk dad, the girl, the coming of age. But it fails. Instead, it just becomes a silly movie for very little kids where the three kids do battle with the FBI in trying to find the puppet. They really just spy on the FBI and follow them around, though. Thankfully, the feds in the story are bumbling idiots! So we can laugh and hope the kids beat them at the finding-the-frog game.
This town takes a vanished puppet a little too seriously. There are boy scout search parties, a fundraising jar for a reward leading to the safe return of the frog, road blocks set up outside the town. Seriously. And they call in the feds. Seriously. The box says this is “based on a true story”. If so, it is the dumbest, saddest, most unfortunate true story of all time. This town should be condemned. There’s stupid in the air. And it’s getting to Rocky, whose Froggy-Doo obsession is alarming and can’t be healthy.
Then the movie ends. As do all Schmaltzy Claptrap Coming Of Age In The Sixties Heartland Heartwarming Movies involving terribly cute kids, everything turns out fine. Rocky learns a lesson about Froggy-Doo. Elliot solves the mystery and gets the girl. Sorry about the spoilers here, I am assuming you already knew. The reason Froggy was taken and the person who took him, I will keep a secret. But suffice it to say that nothing interesting ever comes of that. And of course mean ol’ drunk dad shows up at the end, and showing up is enough for us all to know that he will now quit drinking forever and be there for his kids and own up to his responsibilities and everything will be sunshine and rainbows.
One more thing - there is one of those unnecessary voiceovers at the end of the movie, explaining all the stuff that happened after the movie, as a result of that one, life-changing summer. And Elliot says that later in his life, Haley became his wife. And I was like - what? You married the first girl who held your hand? That doesn’t make me happy for you, it makes me depressed and angry! Come on, kid. Live a little! Something like that could be presented as a GOOD thing only in a Schmaltzy Claptrap movie. A movie like A Plumm Summer.
