Producers: Juliet Berman, Bobby Hoppey, Camila Mendes, Rachel Matthews and Matthew Miller   Director: Nicholas Colia    Screenplay: Nicholas Colia   Cast: Everett Blunck, Melanie Lynskey, Owen Teague, Abby Ryder Fortson, Kathryn Newton, Johanna Colón, Alivia Bellamy, Gordon Rocks, Francine Berk, Michael Esper and Ian Hernandez-Oropeza   Distributor: Vertical

Grade: C

Nicholas Colia’s debut feature, an expansion of a short film he made as a student, is a gay coming-of-age film played largely as a cartoon until it turns serious toward the close, with the focus on a fourteen-year old boy you’ll find either endearingly precocious or incredibly irritating. 

That’s Griffin (Everett Blunck), who’s introduced at his middle-school talent show, performing a scene from his latest play, “Regrets of Autumn.”  He plays both parts in a florid kitchen-sink drama melodrama about a feuding married couple, turning from left to right as he switches character; he’ll later describe it as a cross between “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff?” and “American Beauty.”  The audience responds with bewildered silence.

Griffin is undeterred.  He’s been obsessively writing plays for years and mounting them in the basement, his closest friend Kara (Abby Ryder Fortson) serving as director, at least in name (Griffin really decides everything), and three classmates—Winnie (Johanna Colón), Pam (Alivia Bellamy) and Tyler (Gordon Rocks) filling the roles.  He has bigger plans for “Autumn,” which he hopes to mount in a real theatre.

His ambitions are endangered, however, by several facts.  One is that his mother Helen (Melanie Lynskey) isn’t able to support his efforts as she has in the past; her husband (Michael Esper) is away most of the time, and their marriage is obviously in trouble, a fact that’s worked its way, apparently without oblivious Griffin realizing it, into the play.  Kara’s gotten a boyfriend, and is going off with him and his family for a couple of weeks at his family’s lakeside place.  And Helen, overwhelmed at having to run the household on her own, has hired a local neighbor’s son, Brad (Owen Teague), to help with chores around the house.

At first Griffin is distraught over Brad’s presence: the guy blasts music while working in the yard, breaking his concentration as he struggles to revise the play.  But when he finds that Brad, a handsome, surly twenty-something, has come home to his mother (Francine Berk) after flopping as a cutting-edge performance artist in New York City (a video of his act he shows Griffin explains why), he’s enthralled.  The guy’s physique adds to the attraction, of course.

Before long Griffin is taking Brad’s advice about the play and eventually giving Tyler’s role to him, a part that Brad seizes on with a ferocity Griffin loves.  Of course that causes Kara to be concerned, and Winnie and Pam to rebel.  Griffin also has to put up with Brad’s ditzy girlfriend Chloe (Kathryn Newton).  And when Brad’s commitment to the play proves unreliable, Griffin decides to fast-track what’s always been his dream—to make a career for himself in New York, only now in partnership with Brad.  Naturally that does not go well.  Nonetheless the show goes on after he gets back home.

Your reaction to “Griffin in Summer” will depend on your tolerance of Colia’s style, which borders on the mannered, and Blunck’s performance, which by any standard is over-the-top and shrill—a big-screen version of the sort of acting that’s commonplace in comedy series on cable networks like Nickelodeon and The Disney Channel.  But it’s not entirely Blunck’s fault: the character he’s playing is written as such a single-minded, self-absorbed kid that it’s hard to generate much empathy for him—or for the mother who’s given him so much leeway while tending to her own problems.

Teague is no less abrasive, but in his case there’s a reason: he’s doing a wacked-out James Dean impression, and a pretty good one at that.  He’s also adept at teasing out surprising nuances in Brad.  One can also enjoy the work of Fortson, Colón, Bellamy and Rocks, who make Kara, Winnie, Pam and Tyler engaging even as you wonder how Griffin has shanghaied them into playing second fiddle in his absurd sketches.  The rest of the cast, including Lynskey, don’t matter much.

The movie has a sitcomish look, thanks to production designer Mariya Boykova, costumer Aaron Crosby and cinematographer Felipe Vara de Rey, and a bouncy score by Nami Melumad accentuates the similarity.  But the editing by Jon Higgins and Sam Levy goes in the other direction, so unhurried that it allows the longueurs to multiply.

“Griffin in Summer” has its moments, but overall it suffers from the lazy, hazy feel of the season in which it’s set.