‘Summer Camp’ Movie Review: Acting Pros Can’t Carry Hacky Material
Photo from Roadside Attractions
From Jeremy Kibler
There is always room for a slight, amiable comedy where acting pros just want to have a lark. Aimed at the same demographic as Book Club, Poms, Book Club: The Next Chapter, and 80 for Brady, Summer Camp seems to exist only because Diane Keaton, Kathy Bates, and Alfre Woodard all wanted to hang out. Everyone seems to be having a delightful time, but the feeling isn’t always mutual for the viewer.
Nora (Keaton), Ginny (Bates), and Mary (Woodard) have all been friends since summer camp in North Carolina. 50 years later, they’ve kept in touch since but life always gets in the way. Nora is widowed and a workaholic CEO for her bioengineering company. Ginny is a no-nonsense self-help guru with as much of a license in therapy as Dr. Phil. Mary (Woodard) always wanted to be a doctor and have more in her life, but she’s a nurse who settled for a loveless marriage. On her book tour, Ginny decides to organize a reunion at the North Carolina summer camp where they first met.
Not much has changed, like mean girl Jane (Beverly D’Angelo) and her posse still thinking they run the show, and then hunky crushes Stevie D (Eugene Levy) and Tommy (Dennis Haysbert) still looking Nora and Mary’s way. As these three oldest friends come to realize, there’s so much more to live for, none of us are perfect, and friendship always wins. And all you need to do to learn all of these life lessons is to get on a zip line and have a few white water rafting hijinks.
As a hangout with a comforting soundtrack, Summer Camp goes down easy enough. But as an actual movie, it’s really not much. Writer-director Castille Landon (Fear of Rain) knows who she has in front of the camera, hoping this cast can just carry the rest, but not even the outtakes during the end credits can spark a laugh.
While Landon’s screenplay is filled to the gills with clichés, the wiser material is definitely there but too often gets smothered under forced jokes and lame one-liners. This is the kind of movie where a scene just ends with a food fight between older folks, all cued to “Ballroom Blitz.” It’s the kind of movie where every character has to keep reiterating their feelings when it’s time to reconcile. It’s even the kind of movie where Nicole Richie shows up as a camp counselor for no reason. Then there’s the sloppy filmmaking, scenes being poorly framed and edited together with little shot continuity. Not that a light comedy needs to be shot by the heroic Roger Deakins, but was it a choice to make a movie look so slapped-together?
A reminder that none of these charming actors need to hang out together this badly, Summer Camp is a forgettable project for all. Keaton can play adorably daffy in her sleep, but here, yet again, she’s playing another turtleneck, long sleeve-wearing Diane Keaton figure with an occupation in chemistry. Keaton shares a sweetness with Eugene Levy, but seeing them together just opens the possibility of a better movie that never manifests. As Ginny Moon, Bates is the brassy one—another trait the actress has played again and again—and gets saddled with the same horrid wig Julia Roberts wore in the late Garry Marshall’s terrible Mother’s Day. She even has the pleasure of opening up the film with a useless, perfunctory voice-over narration that never comes back. Woodard at least radiates warmth and gets to be her lovely self that it’s a shame the movie wasn’t just about Mary getting her groove back. Leave it to Josh Peck, though, as camp counselor Jimmy who keeps getting transferred to different departments, to deliver the most honest line in the whole movie.
It was probably great for Keaton, Bates, and Woodard to see themselves at the top of the call sheet, however, this can’t be the best script written for women of a certain age. No one embarrasses themselves, but no one should have to carry the hacky material that Summer Camp has to offer.
Rating: 1.5/5
Summer Camp hits theaters on May 31, 2024.
