Review: 'all summers end' wastes strong cast with bad choices
- Select a language for the TTS:
- UK English Female
- UK English Male
- US English Female
- US English Male
- Australian Female
- Australian Male
- Language selected: (auto detect) - EN
Play all audios:

There’s much a filmmaker could do with a cast like the one “All Summers End” has — led by Tye Sheridan and Kaitlyn Dever as love-struck teens, and Paula Malcolmson and Annabeth Gish as their
moms — but writer-director Kyle Wilamowski smothers his bid for nuanced emotion in the cardboard mechanics of bad-decision drama. The stars bring effortless believability as gently
exploratory 16-year-olds Conrad and Grace, who become close over a summer in which Grace loses her older brother Eric in a car accident. Conrad’s sensitive but no innocent, however – he
bears the terrible secret of having been party to the reckless shenanigans, instigated by his mean-spirited friends, that led to Eric’s death. With the languid air of suburban malaise and
North Carolina greenery as an evocative backdrop, Wilamowski’s sensitive yet predictable rollout of ill-fated love under a cloud of sadness and one-way immense guilt might have remained
suitably so-so. But with the terrible decision to bracket it all as the ruefully narrated remembrance of the older Conrad (Pablo Schreiber), we’re subjected to Captain Obvious
contextualizing marked by mood-shattering interjections like “I was furious” (because Sheridan isn’t already communicating that?) and “Some of us grow wiser, some of us don’t.” (Oh really?)
It’s the kind of ersatz, actor-undercutting stab at authorial seriousness that makes it as regrettable a choice as Conrad’s when he indulges in a night of vandalizing that goes horribly
wrong. ------------- ‘ALL SUMMERS END’ Not rated RUNNING TIME: 1 hour, 27 minutes PLAYING: Laemmle Music Hall, Beverly Hills SEE THE MOST-READ STORIES IN ENTERTAINMENT THIS HOUR » MOVIE
TRAILERS [email protected] MORE TO READ