Review: Theater Camp

Theater Camp
Cert: 12A / 93 mins / Dir. Molly Gordon & Nick Lieberman / Trailer

Well, the trailer for this made me want to gouge my own brain out with pins, but I went to watch Theater Camp anyway because I'm a sucker for giving a film an even break (look, if I don't watch it then how can I tell anyone who'll listen how awful it is?). Theater Camp is awful. Proving that if there's one thing worse than needy actors it's needy actors playing needy actors, at some point this was pitched as an underdog comedy, then someone forget to write in likeable characters. Or comedy. Instead we get mawkish, cack-handed, overly earnest yet cripplingly insincere tosh like some early 80s Hallmark daytime-movie which has made its way onto BBC2 during the summer holidays when you were hoping for Fast Times At Ridgemont High but you asked your nan for the television especially and she's in the room so now you've got to watch it and pretend you're interested. As plot-devices go, "we've got to save the theatre by putting on a show!!" is so hackneyed that the literal Muppets were sending it up as a cliché over a decade ago. For reasons I can't fathom this is presented as a low-budget documentary (the kind that's constantly filmed on four separate cameras), even though it's filled with actors you clearly recognise from other films and TV shows. And hey that's okay, Spinal Tap was presented as a documentary too, except that leaned into the comedic ridiculousness of the docu-format whereas Theater Camp plays it entirely straight. Perhaps the weirdest surprise is that although the film is filled with kids, they are in no way the annoying factor(s) here, that honour is owned fully and shamelessly by the atrocious adult cast who are doing it all on purpose. Who is this for? Theatre people are going to see the movie as condescending or insulting, while non-theatre people are going to see it as the reason they don't go to the theatre. So who's winning here? Not the audience, that's for sure. I think the last time I took against a film as vehemently as this was Bodies Bodies Bodies, and at least with that there was the threat of imminent lethal violence. Here, I was just praying for that...

Best line, show-runner Amos (Ben Platt):
"I apologise... waiting for entertainment that's expected is painful."

Well, quite.

Correct: zero stars.

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.