A little coming of age movie set in the Eighties

Michael Tully's little tale of a boy about to enter ninth grade doesn't make waves or create deep emotional conflicts. Tully delivers something that succeeds on its unambitious level very well, because he plays it simple and straight. His hero is Rad Miracle (Marcello Conte), a boy who'll enter ninth grade in the fall in Mount Airy, Maryland. He and his little family are vacationing in Ocean City, Maryland. And so it comes to pass that Rad has to beat the local bully, the nasty, older and bigger rich boy Lyle Ace (Joseph McCaughtry) at a ping pong challenge staged between the two of them at the all-important teen center, the "Fun Hub." Lyle and his even nastier chunky redheaded sidekick Dale Lyons (Andy Riddle) deliver a little dose of humiliation to Rad every time they come across him. But what's surprising is how easy everything is for Rad. He's not into making waves. If you enjoy this movie, it will be because you like looking at the cute boys (especially the adorable, rosy cheeked Marcello) and girls (especially his would-be love, putative cocaine addict and former Lyle girlfriend Stacy Summers (Emmi Shockley) and admiring their Eighties clothes, listening to their Eighties music, watching them do their Eighties things. Rad isn't just into ping poing; he works on his break dancing moves all the time, as does his new best friend Teddy Frye (Myles Massey), who brings his dad's giant boom box to the beach, and the outfits and hairdos are to be savored in every scene. Though this aspect never takes over, Ping Pong Summer is as much as anything a quiet celebration of American pop history. Some of the cast come from Maryland, and the movie shows all the iconic locations and joints for those who have memories of summers at the eastern shore resort: Tully is looking at his own past through rose-colored glasses here.

Not least of the movie's achievements, Tully manages, if only briefly, to make table tennis seem exciting and suspenseful. For the finale is a sporting event: a ping pong challenge in which Rad must try to beat Lyle, one-on-one, before a full Fun Hub audience. Typical of the way the underdog isn't having it really all that hard at all, Rad has plenty of support at the challenge match. In fact he seems to have a bigger claque on hand than the not-so-popular Lyle. In the forefront is his family, his mom (All the Right Movies' Lea Thompson), benevolent Irish Dad (John Hannah), and goth older sister Michelle (Helena May Seabrook), who's on the way to become more cheerful and mainstream and fully cheers Rad on. Essential to Rad's edge in the match is the surprise help he gets from the outcast neighbor Randi Jammer (Susan Sarandon), who turns out to have been a ping champion in her time and gives Rad some last minute Karate Kid-like coaching. One would like to say this relationship is interesting, but both the part and the performance of Randi are sketchy. But we accept this device because it's a convention of it fits, like everything else.

It's impossible to dislike the handsome and classic-featured Marcello Conte as Rad. He is such eye-candy he has only to walk around on camera; but his part is too neutral and underwritten. Granted male teens are notoriously enigmatic. But except for some tears when he's had the opportunity to kiss Stacey on the beach at night and blows it (while Teddy's striking out similarly at another location), Rad rarely registers emotion. Example: when Randi appears and calls Rad over mid-match and asks him what he's doing, he mumbles, "Losing, I guess," as if he were a mere spectator of his own life. Is this the zen of ping pong?

Miles Massey, whose talking just like a white boy is unexplained by his more ethnic black dad, is a cheerful, lively element that's underused. So is the goth sister. And the aunt (Amy Sedaris) and uncle (Robert Longstreet) to whom the Miracles pay an obligatory visit with obligatory crab feast -- tough to be confronted by a table piled high with dead crabs if you're timid, or a vegetarian -- are a bit too extreme and even repulsive for this movie's otherwise gentle comedy style. For some reason -- flawed publicity? -- summaries of this movie repeatedly describe Rad as 13, but if he were that age and about to enter ninht grade, he'd have to have been four years old when he started grade school. The actor's looks make him more like 14 or 15, which he should be. The way Stacy immediately eyes him with interest seems strange since at times she looks like she could be his young mother. However, flawed though it may be, Ping Pong Summer does right what it does, which makes it gentle, unchallenging, and sweet without ever being clichéd or saccharine. But equal to or even much like a classic Eighties film this is not.

Ping Pong Summer, 92 mins., was produced with aid from the San Francisco Film Society Kenneth Rainin Foundation and debuted at Sundance January 2014. Released in theaters in NYC Friday 6 June 2014.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.