Lyle and Dale pull their car over while playing the song "Broken Wings" by Mr. Mister on the radio, proceeding to knock Rad over and destroy his groceries, but a middle-aged woman appears out of her own property and waves a dead fish in the bullies' faces, confusing them and creeping them out until they run away.

Rad is able to attract the attention of local popular girl Stacy Summers (a rumoured cocaine addict), and he does make a new friend upon meeting Teddy Fryy, another vacationer staying in Ocean City with his father.

They attend a dance at a local youth centre, where Rad discovers that Stacy is in fact not a cocaine addict, but instead eats too many Pixy Stix and is giving herself a sugar high).

Meanwhile Rad visits his artsy liberal relatives at the beach, who've made unintentionally phallic shapes out of seashell sculptures, and Michelle begins questioning her direction in life and her physical appearance.

Director Michael Tully has said that the movie was inspired by growing up with 1980s Hollywood films, ping pong and sunny summer times in Ocean City, Maryland.

Also, by casting generational icons like Susan Sarandon and Lea Thompson, they were able to pay homage to time periods that parents in the audience would be familiar with.

"[19] NPR was less positive, with reviewer Tomas Hachard calling the film "a sometimes intriguing experiment in upended expectations, though not a particularly successful one," that was largely lacking "coherent purpose".

[20] Calum Marsh of Film.com criticized Ping Pong Summer as "a cool ninety minutes of vapid 80s fetishism packaged to resemble a proper feature film" that was "resoundingly pointless".

[21] Jeannette Catsoulis of The New York Times focused criticism on the "limp hero" and "lifeless plot", arguing that the positive qualities of the film did not "excuse characters that are little more than props for embarrassing fashion or delivery systems for dated slang.

"[22] Ann Hornaday at The Washington Post argued that "its relatively uninvolving story, starchily directed by Tully and given little zing by an uneven cast, makes 'Ping Pong Summer'" an "okay-not-great" film.