Charlene: Oooooh! It's those damn kids down at that arcade!

Pinball Summer exists in that specific teen sex comedy fantasy universe... a universe where every day is the first day of summer vacation, adults exist only to scream "you damn kids," even the biggest losers have kickass hotrods, the Pabst Blue Ribbon and cheap weed never run out, and random white t-shirt car washes and banjo-scored car chases can and do break out at any moment.

Fun town.

Pinball Summer does for pinball what Supervan did for custom vanning, The Wizard did for Power Gloving, and American Pie did for pie fucking: take a moderately popular subculture and exploit the shit out of it. The movie's plot ostensibly centers around a pinball championship hosted by Pete's Arcade, and the first-place trophy that a local biker gang steals, then loses. I say ostensibly, because only 20 minutes or so of the movie's 100-minute runtime has anything to do with the contest itself.

Did I mention that Pete's has its own cheerleading squad? It damn sure does.

The rest of the movie runs through the the conventions of the genre: kids making out, playing at the beach, winning and losing and winning the heart of that special girl, getting in fights with the local bully... if I asked you to come up with a list of scenes you'd expect to be in a teen sex comedy, you'd probably be able to describe 80% of this movie.

But what makes Pinball Summer different than other teen sex comedies is that even these cliched scenes all have at least a tangential connection to the world of pinball. You'd think it'd be hard to come up with 100 minutes of pinball-related activities, but director Mihalka somehow manages to do it. It's pretty amazing actually. There's pinball challenges to determine who pays for dinner, make-out sessions in a pinball factory, strip-pinball parties, alpha-male demonstrations of pinball prowess... there's even pinball-related double entendres like "I wanna tilt you on the machine!"

All pinball, all the time.

The movie's best scene comes when the kids head to the drive-in to watch Krakatoa, East of Java and sync up the movie to a recording they'd made the night before of the town's rich kid trying to score with his ice-cold girlfriend. It's a truly funny scene that makes some pretty unexpected things come out of square-jawed character actor Brian Keith's mouth:

Despite being an R-rated flick, Pinball Summer comes across as a bit... soft. Part of that has to do with the alleged bad guy of the film, a leather-clad biker (who rides a Honda) named Bert. The closest Bert comes to being an actual tough guy is when he tells one of the main characters "Hey snot... want me to wipe you away?"... which is pretty damn far from tough. Hell... when the main characters steal his bike and crash it into a lake, all Bert does is shake his fist and say "That's it... now I'm really gonna win that trophy."

Greg and Steve, the two main characters spend a lot of the movie looking at each other like this.

The movie ends with Greg and Bert somehow facing off in the finale of Pete's tournament... even though at no point prior had anyone - much less Greg or Bert - mentioned playing in any of the preliminary rounds. That's probably for the best, because it's hard enough trying to portray one pinball battle as climactic, even with dramatic music, supportive corner men, and a crowd screaming stuff like "Come on Greg... cradle it!" and "Let's go Bert! Get those bonus points."

If you get a chance to see Pinball Summer, the one thing you've gotta watch for are the amazing cars. I mentioned it briefly before, but every single kid in this town has a ride that'll make your jaw drop. From Steve and Greg's custom van, to the disco king's Corvette L82, to the rich kid's Excalibur ("Did I tell you my dad bought a new car? We're a three Excalibur family now.")... the only way you'll ever see this many great vehicles in one place again would be a classic car convention.

If you're in Austin on Wednesday, August 23, 2006, you can see Pinball Summer as part of the Alamo Drafthouse's weekly Weird Wednesday screenings. These goofy teen sex comedies pay perfectly with an energetic crowd and a bucket of beer.