Director: Castille Landon
Writer: Castille Landon
Stars: Kathy Bates, Diane Keaton, Betsy Sodaro
Synopsis: Follows Nora, Ginny, and Mary, three childhood best friends who used to spend every summer at a sleep away camp together. After years, when the opportunity to get back together for a summer camp reunion presents itself, they all seize it.
First of all, since when do summer camps have reunions? It’s a question I’ve been asking since having to sit through the trailer for the cortisol-fueled women of a certain age comedy, Summer Camp. As baby boomers begin to retire, more and more of these types of movies have been made over the past decade. From the Book Club (gulp) franchise, Poms, Las Vegas, and Going in Style, you have a series of movies being shoved down the throats of moviegoers to watch with their parents on Mother’s or Father’s Day.
Summer Camp is that movie, but at the very least, it has its heart in the right place.
The film stars three legendary performers: Academy Award winners Kathy Bates (Misery), Diane Keaton (Annie Hall), and Academy Award nominee Alfre Woodard (Cross Creek). The story follows three childhood friends who, yes, have been best friends since finding each other at that recreational outdoor camp. Ginny (Bates) is a life-hack guru and has conquered social media stardom, unlike any woman her age.
Ginny has been trying to get her friends, Nora (Keaton) and Mary (Woodard), together for ages, but life happens and gets in the way. Nora is a widow, lost her husband of 34 years, and buried herself in her work. Mary is a nurse who regrets never finishing medical school to become a doctor. Mary’s husband, Mike (Seinfeld’s Tom Wright), is too needy and over-reliant on her, calling her during her shift in the emergency room to see where the remote has been placed.
So, Ginny buys a gigantic recreational vehicle, practically abducting her two friends, and goes off for a nostalgia-filled week of reliving old memories while making new ones.
Castille Landon, director of the After franchise of underwhelming films, brings the same sort of shallow and saccharine storytelling and characters with such little three-dimensionality that a couple of fat heads on your child’s wall would be more well-rounded. Not only is the story incredibly lame, but everything from the story, main characters, and supporting roles comes straight out of the studio machine artificial playbook.
This regurgitates the same old story we have seen countless times before and in any age bracket. Three friends get together, check. Three friends enjoy their time together, check. Three friends meet members of the opposite sex, rekindling romantic feelings they haven’t felt in years. Finally, those friends fight; they leave angry but get back together for an apology, leaving everyone with that warm and fuzzy feeling studios pander to their audiences with, check and check.
My issue with movies like Summer Camp is that their scripts treat their targeted audiences like children’s movies. They try to teach and send positive messages to older adult men and women who are fully formed as if they haven’t lived their entire lives with more experience than anyone. Cliché, cut-out romantic lead (and villain) male characters highlight these issues.
Eugene Levy’s Stevie is the nerdy and anxious one. Of course, he pairs with Keaton’s anxious and nerdy character. Dennis Haysbert’s Tommy is a different kind of trope; that good guy cliché is looking to fill that romantic void. (It’s a role he has played hundreds of times before and was tailor made for.) Even Wright’s Mike is a one-note, toxic male villain type we have seen countless times before, with no redeemable qualities.
Yes, Kathy Bates has one or two feisty retorts that are humorous. Josh Peck has an amusing yet predictable running gag. The only reason that Summer Camp is tolerable is the infectious supporting turn by Betsy Sodaro, who has the film’s only laugh-out-loud moment, which, unfortunately, is all about product placement. Besides that, this is one of the more underwhelming comedies in recent memory.
