Blu-Ray Review: Kino Lorber’s Summer Rental (Special Edition) 

John Candy’s first starring role Summer Rental comes to Blu-ray thanks to Kino Lorber.

The Film 

Carl Reiner’s delightful summer vacation comedy Summer Rental is the perfect vehicle for John Candy.  The first lead role for the comic actor feels similar to his Great Outdoors but Summer Rental finds Candy at his most charming and relaxing not having to compete with Dan Aykroyd’s shenanigans.  

Air Traffic Controller Jack Chester (Candy) after having a near panic attack over an incident involving a fly on his radar screen is forced to take a month-long vacation. Jack having not taken a holiday since his honeymoon packs up the family to Florida.  Instantly, Jack’s vacation is besieged by calamity after calamity – including coming to head with an elitist local Al Pellet (Richard Crenna at his slimiest), and his rental house turned into a party for uninvited beach tourists.  Jack attempts to take in stride but can never find his Zen … until he recaptures his love for sailing.  Recaptured being more relearning from part-time restaurant owner and full-time pirate scaly wag Scully (an inspired Rip Torn).  As Jack gets his swag back his family must fight for their right to stay in the vacation rental as Pellet has taken control.  It all ends, as many 80s comedies do, with a race, in this case, a regatta.  

Reiner’s film is a light delightful comedy whose stakes are such that never rises beyond small time.  There’s an effervescent charm to the film with Candy in the center as the put-upon patriarch who delivers comedic gold to anything he does here.  You can see why Candy was cast as a father or father figure from this point forward.  He’s perfect as Jack here, many of the cliches of dadhood come from this very film.  As much as people would like to say Chevy Chase and his Clark Griswold were the impetus of dad-bod cinema and meme-dom it is not, Chevy was always too erudite for that generalization.  

As much as Candy is charming it’s both Crenna and Torn that almost steal the film from him. Each character actor gives their own different charm to their role much to the benefit of the film.  Crenna has never been better as the swarmy Pellet who wants nothing more than to have vacationers leave his seaside hamlet.  Torn is hilarious imbuing Scully with pirate swagger we wouldn’t see until Captain Jack Sparrow two decades later.  

Summer Rental builds its narrative drive and does so perfectly into its third act where Jack’s family comes together for the regatta.  It’s the third act that the film shines with raised stakes of this race that actually still surprises even though we know the eventual outcome.  Therein lies the charms of Reiner’s film.  Unexpectedly expectedness in comedy.  

The Transfer

The all-new HD Master – From a 4K Scan of the 35mm Original Camera Negative is a solid representation of the film. The transfer is clean and free of dirt and scratches.  The Ric Waite photographed film shot on location in Georgia and Floria looks beautiful on Blu-ray.  Bravo to Paramount for taking the care and time on the transfer for this release which could have just been dumped to home video. 

The Extras

They include the following;

• NEW Audio Commentary by Film Historian Joe Ramoni
• Ear Candy: The Music of Summer Rental 
• Theatrical Trailer

The all-new Audio Commentary by Film Historian Joe Ramoni begins with his bonafides and the production’s origins at Paramount during the Katzenberg/Eisner vacating to Disney era and how it was greenlit.  Some of the details include the quick development process – and the lack of a rewriting process; how this differs from National Lampoon’s Vacation that is similar is topic; a discussion of the career and work here of John Candy; the various location that the production went to in Georgia and Florida; the origins of the script during a real vacation of producer Bernie Brillstein; a discussion of the work and career of Richard Crenna;  a discussion of the possible tenuous relationship with the production of Rip Torn; a discussion of TV cuts / extended cuts of films and here; the work here and career of Director Carl Reiner – and the reason why he wanted to make this film; a proposed remake of Last Holiday that Candy and Reiner never made – and how they wanted to make another film though wanted to; the reasons why Ned Tannen (the CEO of Paramount) wanted to cut the Sail Boat / Regatta plot out of the film; the speed at which the production move through editing for release; the work of composer Alan Silvestri – and just how different it is from his iconic work with Zemeckis of the 1980s; the editing out of the work of John Larroquette; how the breast job scene was based in real life; a great longer discussion of the great kindness of John Candy – both here and other productions and real life;  a larger discussion of the various actors that appear in the film; a larger discussion of what was cut from the script; and much more.  

Ear Candy: The Music of Summer Rental (10:15) – is an all-new featurette by Entertainment Journalists Max Evry focusing on the soundtrack and score of Summer Rental and fans of the film Jake Lamme and Matthew Chojnacki (Producers at Rusted Wave and 1984 Publishing collaborated to publish the Soundtrack on Vinyl and CD. The featurette takes you through the process of producing a vinyl in the modern age in detail – including their theories on how the construct the artwork (when none is present).  

Rounding out the special features are trailers for Summer Rental (1:29); Spaceballs (2:36); Uncle Buck (1:59); Delirious (2:23); Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (2:01) 

The Final Thought 

Kino has given a great edition of a true 80s comedy cult classic.  Recommended!! 

Kino Lorber’s Blu-Ray edition of Summer Rental is out now