Camp

People think that these kind of teen movies are paint-by-numbers and very easy to make. Camp proves that theory wrong. Movies like this either need to be high-camp comedy or deep and meaningful. This movie manages to be neither. I never once cared about any character (And the ensemble cast was so big that characters just melded into one.) Just a lot of bland, cookie-cutter depressed teenagers. There was nothing new, nothing interesting, nothing humourous. It feels like another film written by people who have completely forgotten what it is like to be a teenager. I stuck with it to see if it got better, but it didn't.

I get that not everything can be the next Heavyweights, Meatballs, Wet Hot American Summer, or Camp Nowhere, but at least try and give your movie some personality to become a great camp story of your generation. This movie has the personality of a moth, and they got a bunch of good talent just to squander it. If you want to make a coming of age story, do it, but do it right. This movie wanted to be every teen sex comedy mixed with My So Called Life and all it did was make the color brown after all the horrible genre mixing. I feel like no one can get a good formula down for a summer camp movie. There is sooooo much source material out there.

I'm always willing to give a summer camp movie a try. Heavyweights (1995) was and is a great movie. I tried this one and it was a complete miss. I wondered why the actors and actresses looked so young when the movie claimed to be made in 2024 on the streaming service. On here it says 2023. Thankfully someone had posted a super helpful fact under Trivia here that said "Shot in 2016 but not released until eight years later." Exactly. The old DVD that sits on a shelf for almost a decade routine. Usually it's a few years but in this case it's eight. The more years it sits, the worse it ages. That sums up this movie. If this movie was good and test audiences gave it good reviews, it wouldn't have sat on a shelf for 8 years. Getting to the movie itself - it's just an unnecessary movie. As in, most of the characters are incredibly vapid and just insult each other. It became so over the top. I found myself losing interest quickly as I couldn't relate to anyone. I ended up sitting through the whole thing but it was tedious and I was happy once the credits rolled. If there was a masked killer picking people off during it, at least there would have been a point.

Directed by Josh Yunis and written by David Kirkeby, Sarah Kruchowski and Jason Romaine, Camp attempts to be a throwback to the summer teen sex comedies that I grew up with, yet with its head and heart fully aware of the changes that have happened since then. The thing you may not realize is that this was made in 2016. So maybe it's not as much a throwback as a frozen leftover. Teens gather for their last summer at Camp Pearlstein, a place that even has its own twin rabbis, Jason and Randy (played by the Sklar Brothers), as well as traditional counselors like Hulk (Horatio Sanz) and Ruth (Sarah Kruchowski). Well, traditional is just a title, because they're stranger than any of the kids they're watching over. The plot is what you expect: Jake (Brendan Meyer) is in love with Maya (Mychala Lee) but has to contend with Ezra (Ian Nelson), a peeping tom with a smart phone who just wants to see as many of the girls naked and in his bed as possible. And despite being prominent on the poster, Joey King is barely in this. She became a bigger star than most of the cast in the time this sat on the shelf. I guess instead of trying to relive my memories of all the sleepover camps of my teen years -- which were only experienced on the TV and through VHS -- I should just go back and watch those movies. There are a few funny parts -- the Sklar Brothers are pretty funny -- but that strange subplot about the counselors dressing as Nazi specters is...weird. Like the movie forgets that it's a comedy weird.