Summering

A warmhearted homage to pre-adolescent friendship that takes its cues from "Stand By Me," but is more concerned with female relationships than potboiler plots.

Who can really say where the line between cinematic homage and pilfering lies?

“Summering” clearly takes its cues from “Stand By Me.” Directed by James Ponsoldt (“The Spectacular Now,”) who co-wrote the script with Benjamin Percy, it’s about four girls on the cusp of adolescence who embark on a grim adventure in the days before middle school starts involving a dead body. One of them even pilfers a parent’s gun for the trip.

They’ll all grow up a little over the course of a few days and vow to remain friends forever, but the tale is infused with a sense of the vagaries of life that push and pull people apart.

That’s enough right there to warrant a piqued phone call from Stephen King’s attorney. But “Summering” isn’t just a lazy gender-swap ripoff.

I’d say Ponsoldt started with the framework of “Stand By Me,” but focused on something more concerned with female relationships than a potboiler plot. There’s no cross-country journey here involving train tracks, killer junkyard dogs, a gang of older hoodlums or leech-infested jaunts in the swamp.

Instead, the story begins with the girls and their growing obsession with the dead man. They find him near the tree shrine they’ve created using castoff bits of their girlhood: dollheads, a shoe, fake jewelry, etc. Then in the second half the movie loops in their mothers, each distinct individuals in their own way, and explores how their relationship with their kid is changing as they bloom into young women.

It’s got a great cast and wonderful cinematography by Greta Zozula, sun-dappled light peeking through the trees and saturating the sidewalks. The music by Drum & Lace is a wonderful throwback to 1980s electronic scores that stirs the senses and evokes sharp emotions. I was positively humming.

As a whole, the movie feels like a rough draft of something deeper and more fleshed out. At 85 minutes, it’s the rare movie these days I wanted to tarry longer. The young cast of girls are expressive and vibrant presences, though some of their line readings come across stilted and, well, childlike.

Madalen Mills plays Dina, the smartest of the group but also a bit anxiety-ridden, for which she takes medication. Lola (Sanai Victoria), tall in stature and upstanding morals, is the goody-girl of the group. Mari (Eden Grace Redfield) is diminutive and a bit of a smart aleck, despite her church-going mom (Megan Mullally). Daisy (Lia Barnett) is the quiet kid with trouble going on at home, as her mom (Lake Bell) drinks herself into a stupor every night after her dad went missing a year ago.

The quartet stumbles across a man in a blue suit sprawled out near their tree place — nicknamed Terabithia after the book — and can’t decide what to do. Daisy, the only one with a phone, goes to call the police but the others beg off.

Like with the boys in “Stand,” the body represents their opportunity to break away from being little kids and enter into an adult world filled with real choices and consequences. Also, they’ve literally grown up with TV shows and movies in which females were always the object of the action rather than the subject.

“It’s always about men killing girls and other men saving girls, or finding the dead girls they could’ve saved. But this is on us. This is our body,” Lola pleads, practically chanting.

Using cover stories to tell their moms where they’re going, they launch their own investigation to find out who the man is and how he ended up dead. This involves some old-school shoe leather snooping, such as wandering into a sad VFW where the residents day-drink their troubles away, but also some dark web searching.

He was found at the bottom of what’s known to the locals as Suicide Bridge, so maybe he killed himself? Or was pushed?

Of course, at some point the parents become suspicious when the girls are found to not be where they’re supposed to, and the mothers gang up to launch their own parallel hunt for their daughters. Ashley Madekwe and Yolando Strange play the other mothers.

Though the story has an old-timey feel, it’s set in modern day and sometimes a tonal dissonance intrudes. For example, the idea of a foursome of 11-year-olds running around town on their own for hours on end feels like a proposition from when I was a kid, not 2022.

“Summering” is one of those movies where you appreciate all the ingredients that went into it, but the resulting meal isn’t as satisfying as it should be. Certainly it’s a pale reflection of “Stand By Me.” But there’s enough here, along with a beautacious filmmaking aesthetic, to want to walk a ways with these near-women.