The best summer movies to get you in the holiday mood

Summer movies don’t have to be up-beat. Before the action of Jaws takes to the sea, it radiates with the heat of summer. You can all but feel the heat of the sand as Mayor Vaughn refuses to close the beach. Heck, maybe it’s that vivid sense of a summer holiday that still makes us a a little afraid of sharks whenever we head into the sea.

Set in the glorious heat of Maine, Stephen King’s classic novella is a coming-of-age story that perfectly encapsulates the deep bonds children have for each other that unfortunately disappear in adulthood. While the idea of a group of kids having a day out to see a dead body is a moribund one, this is one movie that’s all about the journey and what a joyous thing it is.

Andy Samberg and Christin Milioti are wedding guests trapped in a time loop. Every day they sit through the same ceremony, witness the same beats. Yep, it’s another take on Groundhog Day. The summer vibes here come in part from the location, a venue with a beautiful pool located out in the baking desert. It’s also a top-quality rom-com everyone should watch at least once, if not on loop.

Jason Segel spends a decent amount of time in Forgetting Sarah Marshall wearing a flower necklace and Hawaiian shirt. Much of the film is set in a beautiful resort on Oahu. It’s the summery holiday of dreams, just not exactly in the way the film itself pans out. Segel’s Peter Bretter heads to the resort after a break-up with TV star Sarah Marshall, only to find her there with her new boyfriend. A smash hit at the time in 2008. It’s just a shame co-star Russell Brand has since gone way off the deep-end since in real life, souring the summery vibes a bit.

Who fancies a road trip? Little Miss Sunshine sees three generations of the Hoover family pile into a Volkswagen van to head across California. The destination is the Little Miss Sunshine Beaty pageant, in which the youngest member of the family, played by Abigail Breslin, wants to compete. The film was directed by Valerie Faris and Jonathan Dayton, a husband and wife duo. Despite its indie premise, the film would go on to be a surprise hit, making $101 million at the box office from a humble $8 million budget. It also won two Oscars, for its screenplay and for Alan Arkin’s performance as the grandfather.

This was Spike Lee’s third film as director. And it’s probably still his best. Racial tensions during a hot New York summer in Brooklyn, over something that may at first seem trivial. The local pizza place has a wall of fame, where the pictures of famous patrons hang. But only white actors have been put up on the board. The board becomes to represent racism, and tensions simmer across the sweltering neighbourhood. It even stars director and writer Spike Lee in a major role.

This is one of the best summer coming-of-age tales. Liam James is Duncan, an awkward teen who just doesn’t feel at home in his own body. He is taken on holiday with his mother and her new partner, played by Steve Carrell. And this is basically a nightmare scenario in his world. However, when he manages to pick up a casual job at a water park, he finds new friends and a new sense of himself. Loads of heart to this one, and a stellar cast including Sam Rockwell, Alison Janney, Toni Collette and Maya Rudolph.

Richard Linklater has a real talent for expressing those summer vibes. Dazed and Confused was made in the 1990s, set in the 1970s, and is about the adventures of a gang of unruly kids on their last day of school. It’s the beginning of summer vacation, with no responsibilities and wide open future ahead. If you’d like a more recent take on a similar concept, Linklater’s Everybody Wants Some!! From 2016 features slightly older characters, is set in 1980, and is also great.

Duking it out for the title of best Wes Anderson film with The Royal Tenenbaums, Moonrise Kingdom is at least Anderson’s most summery movie. A couple of kids “fall in love” and abscond from summer camp. A fantastical adventure follows, unfolding like the daydream of the 12-year-olds represented in the film itself.

You could pick any of the Before trilogy films for this slot. But it all starts here, the love affair between Ethan Hawke’s Jesse and Julie Delphy’s Celine. The two meet on a train and spend one long day together in Vienna, a day the viewer can sketch out into a love affair lasting the rest of their lives. We get those sketches drawn out by director Richard Linklater too, in 2004’s Before Sunset and 2013’s Before Midnight. Ethan Hawke has suggested he’d be up for returning for a fourth in the series too, although Delphy reportedly turned down the project.

Maybe the post-apocalypse world of Mad Max doesn’t even have real seasons, but you can sure feel the baking sun of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. Anya Taylor-Joy stars as Furiosa, who is kidnapped from her paradise-like home as a child, to spend a life masquerading as an engineer in the Citadel. She makes her escape years later across the roasting deserts, trying to find her way back home. This acts as a prequel to 2015’s Mad Max: Fury Road.

This 2021 Pixar film came and went without much fanfare, and only had a limited cinematic release. But it has the most immaculate and nostalgic summer vibes of all the Pixar movies. Luca is a sea monster. He can turn human when he leaves the water, though, and his friend Alberto encourages him to break the rules to visit holiday-scene Italian village, Portorosso. They spent their days tearing around its cobbled streets on newly-found friend Giulia’s scooter, chasing adventure. We estimate a 94% chance this one will make you misty eyed if it doesn’t have you full-blown crying.

Olivia Wilde’s directorial debut Booksmart nails what you’d hope your last day at school would be like. Amy and Molly are best friends whose futures are looking bright. The opposite of what we might have seen in characters from the 90s or 2000s, their next steps are already in place. They aced their exams. But they just wish they had more fun while at school. What follows is a wild night of parties that manage to incorporate elements of the surreal while still feeling entirely grounded.

Adventureland recounts a particular kind of summer for James Brennan, played by Jessie Eisenberg. He has finished college and needs to find a job. He ends up working at an amusement park. It’s a dead end job, but becomes the stage for a summery coming-of-age story that is endlessly charming in its nostalgic reverie. Lovely stuff.

Not many of us will have grown up with a summer like that depicted in Mid90s. But by the end of the film, you’ll feel as if you’ve experienced it. This is the summer of 1990s Los Angeles. It’s not a particularly rosy picture, but there’s belonging and freedom to be found in the skate park and out on the streets with a skateboard in hand. Mid90s was written and directed by Jonah Hill.

A princess falls asleep on a park bench in Rome, and is found by an American reporter. Romance blooms, as does one of the classic early summer movies. Roman Holiday may be in black and white, but its depiction of a sunny Rome is as vivid as they come. A true classic movie starring Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn.

Childhood summers of the movies are endless days full of promise and adventure. The Sandlot will make you nostalgic for them even if that wasn’t what your own childhood was like. A gang of young boys play baseball in a dusty yard, but get themselves into trouble when they knock a ball signed by Babe Ruth into next door’s backyard, where a fearsome dog lives.

The summer romance is perfectly encapsulated in Luca Guadagnino’s Call My By Your Name. Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer’s characters strike up a romance in Northern Italy. We do have to admit the film’s inclusion here is based on our seeing and loving the film back in 2017. Since then Armie Hammer has been accused of some pretty nasty things, which draws dark clouds over what is a beautiful sunny movie

Stephen King’s IT is about a scary clown called Pennywise. It’s also about a group of seven friends who spend the summer riding their bikes around Maine. This is a classic vision of suburban summers, just with an incredibly unsettling horrific bent. Bill Skarsgard also achieves the unthinkable in this adaptation, in creating a version of Pennywise just as iconic as Tim Curry’s version from the 1990 TV adaptation, and perhaps even more disturbing. IT: Chapter One also made epic bank at the box office for a horror movie, $700 million, making it the highest grossing horror film of all time before (before accounting for inflation).

OK, so Mamma Mia may not be everyone’s cup of tea. But it’s basically distilled summer holiday in cinema form. Plus some questionable warbling from the always wonderful Pierce Brosnan. If somehow you’ve been living under a rock for the last 15 years or so, Mamma Mia is the ABBA musical set among the Greek islands. Beautiful vistas, bad singing, and a bringer of much joy over the years.