Rotten
Summer of '42 has a large amount of charm and tenderness; it also has little dramatic economy and much eye-exhausting photography which translates to forced and artificial emphasis on a strungout story.
Variety Staff, Variety
Summer of '42
In everyone's life there's a "Summer of '42"
1971 · 1h 43m · R
Comedy, Drama, Romance
Directed by
Robert Mulligan
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Summer of '42
Overview
Over the summer of 1942 on Nantucket Island, three friends -- Hermie, Oscy and Benjie -- are more concerned with getting laid than anything else. Hermie falls in love with the married Dorothy, whose husband is an army pilot recently sent to the battlefront of World War II.
Director and cast
- Robert Mulligan Director
- Jennifer O'Neill as Dorothy
- Gary Grimes as Hermie
- Jerry Houser as Oscy
- Oliver Conant as Benjie
- Katherine Allentuck as Aggie
- Christopher Norris as Miriam
- Lou Frizzell as Druggist
- Walter Scott as Dorothy's Husband (uncredited)
- Maureen Stapleton as Hermie's Mother (voice) (uncredited)
- Robert Mulligan as Narrator (voice) (uncredited)
Critics on Rotten Tomatoes
Top critics, in their words
77%
Tomatometer
Rotten
It forever misses, unlike American Graffiti, the heady sexual climate of adolescence to concentrate on the circumstances of the sex act itself.
Geoff Andrew, Time Out
Fresh
"Summer of '42" is a memory movie, written, directed and acted with such uncommon good humor that I don't think you'll be put off by its sweet soft-focus, at least until you start analyzing it afterwards.
Vincent Canby, New York Times
Rotten
Nostalgia is used as a distancing device -- to keep us safely insulated from the boy's immediate grief, love, and passion.
Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
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