3. The Sandlot
No sport says "summer" better than baseball. Every baseball novel, movie, etc. makes some kind of reference to "the boys of summer," painting the baseball stars of yesteryear as more than men; in fact, we're encouraged to revere such people as Babe Ruth, Sandy Koufax, and Joe DiMaggio as gods, beings that aren't like us but possessed some superhuman ability that set them above you and me. Maybe that's why we play baseball; it lets us, for a moment, feel what it might be like to be larger-than-life. The classic 1993 film The Sandlot clearly shows us this quality of baseball, but that's not the only thing that gets it a place on this list; the movie isn't so much a veneration of baseball as much as it is a celebration of summer in general, taking time to delight in all the things that make the season special. The Sandlot tells us the story of Scotty Smalls (Tom Guiry), an introverted, bookish boy who moves to a small town with his mom (Karen Allen) and stepdad (Denis Leary) during the summer of 1962. Feeling a little estranged from his new dad and having no friends, Scotty decides to confine himself to his room for the summer. After being prodded by his mother, however, Scotty goes to the sandlot baseball field of the title, looking to make friends with local legend Benny Rodriguez (Mike Vitar) and his band of baseball-playing cronies. Scotty quickly proves himself hopeless at baseball, and most of the kids immediately reject him. Benny, however, takes pity on Smalls, and decides to coach Smalls in the nuances of the sport. Scotty learns to play quickly, gaining the respect of the other kids in the process. All goes well until, after Benny knocks the cover off a baseball, Scotty finds another ball to play with, namely, his stepdad's Babe Ruth-autographed baseball. After knocking the ball into the domain of The Beast (a huge demon dog), the kids resort to desperate measures to get the treasured ball back. The basic plot of The Sandlot is entertaining, but it's not what makes the movie special. What makes this film such a wonderful summer movie is how well it celebrates all the things that make summer great. We see scenes depicting camp-outs, complete with s'mores and horror stories; Founder's Day picnics; trips to the carnival; flirting with the girls at the city pool (and getting a kiss from the sexy lifeguard in what's probably the funniest scene in the movie); going to summer blockbusters; 4th-of-July barbecues and fireworks; hanging out with friends outside the local mom-and-pop store; and, of course, baseball. No movie does a better job of painting a picture of the idealized Norman-Rockwell summer than The Sandlot. We may have never had as a perfect summer as the one depicted in this film, but you know you wanted one, and this movie gives us a way to have such a summer as often as we wish.