FILMBRATS - REVIEWS

Have you ever longed for those easy going childhood days? The days where you got a break from long division for three months. The days where your parents shipped you off to some cabin in the middle of a forest somewhere. The days where you had to try to make new friends that you wouldn’t see after three weeks. The days where you were forced to stop playing video games and confront nature while your parents back home made you a new baby brother. “Summercamp!” helps you relive those days of sing-a-longs, camp fires, nature walks, and all those other activities that are only cool while you’re at camp.

Directors Bradley Beesley (“The Fearless Freaks”) and Sarah Price (“American Movie,” “The Yes Men”) start us out in a similar fashion to “Spellbound.” We’re introduced to the quirky and interesting kids as they prepare to take their journey. We see their lifestyles and their rooms to get a better sense of their personalities. Very quickly however, the focus becomes less about following several young kids as they experience the ups and downs of being away from home in a strange foreign environment, and more about how two specific children are coping with everything. This isn’t a bad approach, but I wish more time was spent with some of the other boys and girls anyway just to keep the consistency and to get a well-rounded set of perspectives and experiences.

Fatty bratty Cameron is the reluctant bully that seems to only know how to reach out to people by inadvertently alienating himself and causing trouble. Holly is a depressed loner type who’s obsessed with chickadees for a very specific reason and focuses her efforts on looking for them instead of looking for friends. I wanted to know more about the well read future marine, or about those cry baby kids that didn’t want to be away from home for the first time, and so on. It would have also been nice to spend more time with the counselors. They’re an integral part of the experience and they could probably have their own spin off, but as it stands, we get just a taste and not enough solid content from them.

I was lucky (?) enough to be treated to a taste of the camp personality through the audience. Many of the children featured were in the audience and it’s easy to see that they all share a very similar quirky, slightly band geeky but maybe still popular mentality that most people probably do not. I know I didn’t at that age. “I saw ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ and that movie is GOD!” I can’t tell from the movie if the camp has this effect on them or if they’re simply pre-disposed to this sort of behavior. Either way, it’s not a bad thing to have that mindset and attitude in life, just a little hard to take when they gather in such large herds. That sort of holds true at points for the movie as well.

The movie doesn’t have much of a purpose of statement to make. It simply follows these kids around for a few weeks and they happen to catch some of the inevitable film-worthy moments that occur, such as when one of the kids gets a fish hook caught in his eye. I wanted it to delve deeper into these people and what makes them tick, besides the overload of probably unnecessary meds they’re all on. There’s this one point where the kids have to endure an activity where they learn how to be a clown. All the kids look so bored. I think that sort of sums everything up nicely. It’s meant to be entertaining, and it is to some extent, but probably just for those in that subculture. I think I’d rather watch “Wet Hot American Summer” again to get my camp fix. That has a better talent show, too.

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