REVIEW: Summer of 69 [2025]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 102 minutes
Release Date: May 9th, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Hulu
Director(s): Jillian Bell
Writer(s): Jillian Bell and Jules Byrne & Liz Nico

Bean to tangerine.

Max (Matt Cornett) is finally single. Yes, he’s a seventeen-year-old high school senior, but the “finally” remains apt since he’s been dating Mercedes ever since the day Abby (Sam Morelos) met him in elementary school. So, after many long years of pining over her crush, the opportunity to swoop in has arrived. The only problem, though, is that the pining has made it so Abby never dated anyone. Add a complete lack of friends, a budding career as a video game streamer, and the best guess to “What’s a rim job?” being far enough off to wonder why she even tried guessing and she inevitably realizes she’s going to need a lot of help.

Enter Santa Monica (Chloe Fineman), a twenty-eight-year-old stripper with zero confidence problems on-stage yet almost as many as Abby in her personal life. She also doesn’t have any friends—at least none outside of her work at Diamond Dolls. And soon, due to Betty’s (Paula Pell) ineptitude with finances, she won’t even have that. How could she ever show her face at her ten-year reunion if she finds herself standing opposite class president Robin (Natalie Morales) as an unemployed stripper? Impossible to even fathom. So, when Abby proposes hiring her as a “sex coach” for the exact amount needed to save the club, Monica has no choice but to agree.

The meaning of the title to Jillian Bell’s directorial debut Summer of 69 is therefore two-fold (sadly, neither concerns Bryan Adams’ song). One: Abby’s belief (after hearing through the grapevine that is her high school’s mascot, played by Fernando Carsa) that Max’s favorite sex act is 69ing. Two: the symbiotic quid pro quo of Abby and Monica’s arrangement. If all goes according to plan, the former will have the self-confidence to do more than just awkwardly fantasize about talking to Max and the latter will have the cash to save Diamond Dolls and become its new owner. Abby gets to lose her virginity with the boy she loves and Monica gets to enter that reunion as an entrepreneur.

While its parallel roads towards self-actualization and the honest discovery that both women need a friend lean into its wholesome center, this is still a raunchy R-rated comedy. So, don’t expect the journey to be a conventional one even if the trajectory proves familiar. With a millennial at the helm and another as co-lead opposite a zoomer, we’re getting the best of both worlds. What does someone Monica’s age think a good sex comedy needs (her holy grail is Risky Business, which is admittedly more apt for Fineman and Morales’s real ages than the characters they’re playing since I’m pretty sure the phrase “ten-year reunion” is used) and what can someone Abby’s age relate to? How do you bridge the gap? The answer is, of course, simpler than you may think.

Most of the film occurs inside Abby’s outlandish fantasies and Monica’s tragic realities, so the time they spend together is less about the activity than the camaraderie. There’s a reason Bell shoots the Risky Business scene from the television’s perspective. It’s their joyful smiles and authentic pleasure in the other’s company that matters. Because our lives’ indelible moments aren’t usually defined by place or event. They’re defined by the people we shared them with, and both these women have been desperate to find that connection. It remains true with the delusions too since Monica isn’t actually screaming besides Abby during her sex shop nightmare. But rather than land the laugh and move on, Bell ensures Monica stays present by asking where Abby “went.”

Theirs is an odd couple pairing in persona and age, but their emotional insecurities are aligned. It’s why we believe how close they grow in so little time despite starting so far apart (Monica couldn’t get away faster those first couple days). The more vulnerable they become and the more personal details they allow themselves to share, however, the more they recognize their kinship as ambitious loners searching for someone else to acknowledge their greatness due to an inability to acknowledge it in themselves first. Yes, we still get the house party blow-out, smarmy villain (Charlie Day’s Rick Richards looking to steal the club), and overbearing parents (with a fantastic Lily Rose payoff courtesy of Guinevere Govea), but the overall heart wins out.

You can thank Fineman and Morelos for that. In many ways they are the only two grounded characters in this film (besides their respective straight mans in Morales’ Robin and Cornett’s Max). We get to see into their souls by how they interact with the crazies surrounding them. How Abby really wants a friend more than sex and how Monica really needs pride more than money even if the opposite proves to be an easy avenue for attacking the other when feelings get hurt. We know the truth through them, though, so we also know they’ll ultimately come around to remembering why they opened up in the first place. And while that imminent happy ending is again familiar in its construction, the execution maintains an unconventional air of wild fun.