Exactly the sort of lightweight silliness you'd expect.
The primary interesting point is a comparison with say the equivalent 50s movie. In the 50s both the adults and the kids would be subject to the same moral code; in this movie we get the adults (who, let's not forget have both been married) kinda sorta going down a different path from what they insist for the kids, but feeling guilty about it.
Obviously in both cases this is all show, we know from plenty of war memoirs exactly what happened in WW2 (and who can blame them, both the guys expecting to die at any moment, and the girls fully aware of how serious the stakes were and doing whatever they could to help those guys out). But that's followed by the end of war and an awful lot of divorces or persisting, but unhappy, marriages.
So I guess we have the 50s as a desperate attempt to, not exactly impose normality, but more inform people "look we've lived through the extreme passions, we know how it goes, and the consequences are long even as the honeymoon is short". What happens in the 60s? Well Griswold is 1965. But that's only for married couples. Looks to me like we have a combination of
So we have movies like this at the cusp, still insisting on the morality of pre-1965, but very clearly aware that the post-1965 world is coming.
And of course the adorable idea that "Swedish girls are easy" which is basically the perpetual dream of the teenage male that, certainly not where he lives, but perhaps somewhere, the girls are easy. If you live in New York, maybe this is the case in California (The Sure Thing). If you live in England maybe it's the case in Greece (The Inbetweeners Movie). And so it goes.
The primary interesting point is a comparison with say the equivalent 50s movie. In the 50s both the adults and the kids would be subject to the same moral code; in this movie we get the adults (who, let's not forget have both been married) kinda sorta going down a different path from what they insist for the kids, but feeling guilty about it.
Obviously in both cases this is all show, we know from plenty of war memoirs exactly what happened in WW2 (and who can blame them, both the guys expecting to die at any moment, and the girls fully aware of how serious the stakes were and doing whatever they could to help those guys out). But that's followed by the end of war and an awful lot of divorces or persisting, but unhappy, marriages.
So I guess we have the 50s as a desperate attempt to, not exactly impose normality, but more inform people "look we've lived through the extreme passions, we know how it goes, and the consequences are long even as the honeymoon is short". What happens in the 60s? Well Griswold is 1965. But that's only for married couples. Looks to me like we have a combination of
- the war (and all its consequences in terms of mad passion, unwed pregnancies, and early marriages) is 20 years ago and the memories less fresh
- contraception is clearly going to be commonplace even if it isn't so yet
So we have movies like this at the cusp, still insisting on the morality of pre-1965, but very clearly aware that the post-1965 world is coming.
And of course the adorable idea that "Swedish girls are easy" which is basically the perpetual dream of the teenage male that, certainly not where he lives, but perhaps somewhere, the girls are easy. If you live in New York, maybe this is the case in California (The Sure Thing). If you live in England maybe it's the case in Greece (The Inbetweeners Movie). And so it goes.