The outdoor pool leaves nowhere for Inken to hide, which is precisely why the film keeps returning there. Under Monika Plura’s clean summer light, every insecurity becomes public property: Cheyenne executes a perfect dive, Inken belly-flops and loses her bikini top, and the watching teenagers convert private embarrassment into social currency within seconds. The setting is bright, open, and faintly cruel.
Martina Plura’s Hot Girl Summer, a remake of the 2001 German comedy Girls on Top, builds its premise around that same exposure. Inken, Vicky, and Lena decide they must experience their first orgasms before school resumes, partly because Cheyenne has loudly presented sexual pleasure as one more competition she has already won. The pact sounds like liberation, yet it begins as another standard the girls feel pressured to meet.
Kya-Celina Barucki, Julia Novohradsky, and Nhung Hong keep this from becoming a mechanical checklist of sexual mishaps. Their shared looks during awkward conversations, the way they crowd around a phone, and their unguarded dancing at a nighttime party establish a friendship that predates the screenplay’s complications. The plot may manufacture their temporary separation later. Their physical ease together makes the rupture feel painful anyway.
Three Bodies, Three Mysteries
Inken’s problem is visible long before she names it. During sex, Tim treats his own climax as proof of mutual success, then seems confused by her dissatisfaction. Jason Klare gives him the confidence of a man who has mistaken completion for competence. Inken’s hints fail because Tim is barely listening.
Her discovery on the bicycle seat is staged as broad physical comedy, with a lamppost, startled onlookers, and the familiar escalation of a body doing something its owner has not planned. Yet the scene carries a precise idea. Inken learns about herself through accidental pressure rather than through her boyfriend, school, or any adult guidance. Knowledge arrives through friction. Romance has very little to do with it.
Her eventual turn toward Flin follows an obvious path. The inattentive boyfriend exits, the sensitive neighbor steps forward, and genre machinery clicks into place. Yoran Leicher softens the predictability through Flin’s hesitations and mixed signals, while Barucki gives Inken enough impatience to stop the romance from becoming pure reward.
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Vicky’s encounters have given her experience without understanding. Her yeast infection, treated first as comic indignity, leads to an unexpected exchange with Cheyenne. Zoë Pastelle Holthuizen lets the rival’s polished aggression loosen during this moment, and Vicky begins seeing a person where she previously saw an enemy. Their attraction grows from revised perception, which gives it greater weight than a sudden revelation inserted for topical value.
Lena’s contradiction is quieter. She struggles to ask Nick for his number while writing popular erotic fiction online as CherryLipzz. Nhung Hong makes the division legible through posture: Lena shrinks in public, then speaks with far greater certainty when discussing the stories she controls. Nick being a trans man is treated without dramatic ceremony. The film allows his identity to exist inside the romantic plot rather than turning it into the plot.
Old Comedy, New Vocabulary
The remake retains the original character names, the bicycle episode, the selfish boyfriend, and the boy next door. Its major changes lie in how the girls acquire language for experiences the earlier film largely treated as comic mysteries.
They search for information about the orgasm gap, question the meaning of virginity, listen to an erotic audio story together, and discuss masturbation without the hushed embarrassment usually assigned to such scenes. Phones create new sources of knowledge and fresh methods of humiliation. One girl receives unsolicited explicit images, and her friends respond with immediate solidarity rather than moral suspicion.
The screenplay sometimes arranges these subjects too neatly. A conversation can feel designed to visit menstruation, clitoral pleasure, sexual labels, and online harassment before the next plot beat arrives. Still, the details matter. The girls are not waiting for boys to explain their bodies to them, a wise decision given the available candidates.
Lena’s life with her grandmother widens the social texture through karaoke gatherings attended by Vietnamese women. Vicky’s attraction to Cheyenne is accepted without the older comedy’s impulse to treat same-sex desire as confusion requiring correction. The changes do not erase the formula. They alter who is permitted to speak inside it.
Bright Frames, Soft Consequences
Monika Plura’s cinematography treats summer as a state of heightened visibility. The outdoor pool, open streets, and nighttime party spaces keep the girls surrounded by witnesses. Costumes separate them before dialogue does: Inken’s more restless styling, Vicky’s confidence, and Lena’s restraint give each figure a distinct visual rhythm.
The soundtrack pushes that rhythm hard, with songs such as Mazie’s “Girls Just Wanna Have Sex” and Doja Cat’s “Boss Bitch” announcing the film’s attitude before some scenes can discover one themselves. The music is blunt. Subtlety would probably melt in this heat.
The three leads supply the nuance the plotting often avoids. Their conversation during the shared erotic-audio experiment works because embarrassment travels between them at different speeds. One leans into the joke, another studies the experience, and the third watches both before reacting. Plura holds the group together rather than isolating each response, allowing friendship to become part of the comic timing.
The film becomes less assured when conflict demands lasting damage. The friendship rift arrives on schedule, misunderstandings gather quickly, and reconciliation follows before resentment can settle. Harassment, betrayal, and public shame are acknowledged, then cleared from the frame so the sunny mood can resume.
This is a moral choice disguised as tonal consistency. Hot Girl Summer believes embarrassment should pass, friendship should survive, and pleasure should belong to the person experiencing it. Its shadows never grow very deep. The camera has already decided to forgive everyone before sunset.
The film premiered in the United States on June 26, 2026, and is available to watch through the Film Movement streaming platform. Three lifelong best friends make a pact to experience their first orgasm before their summer vacation concludes, leading to a series of comedic misadventures and personal discoveries that test the strength of their bond.
Where to Watch Hot Girl Summer (2025) Online
Full Credits
Title: Hot Girl Summer
Distributor: Film Movement
Release date: June 26, 2026
Running time: 89 minutes
Director: Martina Plura
Writers: Kathi Kiesl
Producers and Executive Producers: Marina Schiller, Viola Jäger, Jakob Pochlatko, Dieter Pochlatko
Cast: Kya-Celina Barucki, Julia Novohradsky, Nhung Hong, Zoë Pastelle Holthuizen, Yoran Leicher, Jason Klare, Jamie-Lee Curt Williams, Víctor Kadam, Henning Baum, Annette Frier
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Monika Plura
Composer: Freya Arde
The Review
Hot Girl Summer
Hot Girl Summer turns female desire into bright, accessible comedy, with the poolside light and candy-colored costumes giving every embarrassment the softness of a memory already forgiven. Kya-Celina Barucki, Julia Novohradsky, and Nhung Hong make the friendship credible through shared glances, crowded conversations, and relaxed physical chemistry. The plot frequently arranges conflict with visible machinery, then clears it away before discomfort can deepen. Still, Martina Plura finds honesty in the bicycle discovery, Vicky’s changing view of Cheyenne, and Lena’s private erotic writing. The shadows are shallow, but the sunlight is earned.
PROS
- Natural chemistry between the three leads
- Frank treatment of female pleasure
- Bright, summery visual design
- Vicky and Cheyenne’s thoughtful arc
- Specific modern updates
CONS
- Predictable romantic outcomes
- Contrived friendship conflict
- Problems resolve too quickly
- Supporting characters remain thin
