There are a lot of classic ingredients that go into a banana split.
So it seems appropriate that “Banana Split” includes all the tasty components of a good, fun, soulfully smart summer-after-senior-year teen flick.
It’s got sharp-tongued dialogue and fresh appealing actors who know just how to deliver it.
It’s got an anthropological eye for youth culture, with its perpetually evolving fashions and habits and pop references.
It nods to the mythology of John Hughes — in fact, it opens with deadpan-cynical April (Hannah Marks) getting hit on by dreamboat Nick (Dylan Sprouse), who looks like if-Brad-Pitt-and-Leonardo-dicaprio-had-a-baby with long blond ’90s Hanson brothers hair, the two high schoolers wasting no time before they make out in a diner booth, which leads to a love montage, encounters with a goofy stoner third-wheel friend, a first fight and, of course, the senior prom.
And that’s all in the movie’s first five minutes.
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