A Plumm Summer
2007 film by Caroline Zelder

A Plumm Summer is a 2007 American independent adventure family film directed by Caroline Zelder. It stars Owen Pearce, Chris Massoglia (appearing under the name "Chris J. Kelly"), Morgan Flynn, William Baldwin, Henry Winkler, and Lisa Guerrero, and is narrated by Jeff Daniels. The film follows a teenage boy, his young brother, and a new-to-town teenage girl as they try to find a marionette from a local television show which has been stolen and held for ransom. Meanwhile, the brothers' father struggles with alcoholism and their mother tries to hold her marriage together.
Plot
The film is based on a real event that occurred in 1968 in Billings, Montana, the hometown of screenwriter T. J. Lynch.
A popular locally produced children's television show, Happy Herb & Froggy Doo, features magician Happy Herb (Henry Winkler) and his wisecracking marionette sidekick, Froggy Doo. Froggy Doo is stolen and held for ransom, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is called in to investigate. Elliott Plumm (Chris J. Kelly) used to watch the show, but now feels he is too grown up to do so any longer. His five-year-old brother, Rocky, is a Froggy Doo fan, however. Their father, Mick Plumm (William Baldwin), is a recovering alcoholic and unemployed ex-boxer who believes Elliott's birth prevented him from going to the Olympic Games 12 years earlier.
The public source identifies “A Plumm Summer” as 2007 film by Caroline Zelder. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Plumm, Summer and film.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3266350. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2007 and 1968.
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This entry incorporates text from “A Plumm Summer” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.