American Campers

I tried to think back to my 12 year self and I think she would have liked Happy Campers. Brad Renfro was great and even if his career has been reduced to guest spots in Ghost World, I still think he has talent. There was a "be yourself" message, but it was twisted rather than sparkling clean. I liked that. I liked the film (don't tell anyone). I just wish the writer hadn't tried so hard to make Midsummer's Night Dream references. A good teen movie is frivilous and meaningful and this was both.

Maybe I missed something that the other reviewers saw. All I saw was this: unbelievable, stereotypical characters. There was nothing really that complex about Brad Renfro's character or Dominique Swain's character or James King's character. This movie was just horrible. Brad Renfro just didn't carry off the "hot stud camp counselor" and Swain never gave me any indication that she had any depth. Even the campers were boring and the camp pranks even more dull. Don't rent this movie. It's not even worth laughing at.

Daniel Waters, the writer of Heathers, takes a turn in writing and directing his latest feature: Happy Campers. If Meatballs could be remade with more, younger, and edgier camp counselors, than this would be the film. Some parallels can be made between this film and Heathers, showing that Waters knew which elements worked: both have an overweight child who is picked on, then is later highly respected; both have a song/jingle that is overplayed, which drive a main character crazy; and both try to invent new words and catch phrases. Happy Campers also looks to be inspired from various aspects of Shakespeare. Someone says, "...doth protest too much," straight out of Hamlet; The term "fairies" is thrown around and the head counselor's name is Oberon, who was king of the fairies in A Midsummer Night's Dream; and they toy with the idea of death by poisoning, which is a common end to many Shakespearean tragedies. I greatly enjoyed this film - It took chances, and fought to stay out of the "cleaned-up summer camping movie" category. There's enough shock value here to leave a mark in your moral judgment!

This was not the most original movie I've ever seen. I found there to be few laughs. There were several times when I simply stopped the tape, did something else and came back to it because it couldn't hold my interest. If you're interested in seeing a summer camp movie, check out Wet Hot American Summer.

Daniel Waters guaranteed himself a place in cinema history with his debut screenplay "Heathers", one of the sharpest, blackest and downright original films of the second half of the eighties. Yet in the meantime he has seemingly enjoyed his well-paid limbo in hackville, churning out scripts ranging from the what-was-he-thinking (yes "Hudson Hawk", we mean you) to the sublime (the second and best installment in the Batman franchise). Thus the phrase "Daniel Waters' directorial debut" immediately raises expectations, will it be a twisted and perverted return to his "Heathers" world view? The answer is yes.

The premise is as warped as one would expect - a black, and I mean black, satire on the banal summer camp genre, using it as a metaphor for the point in our lives when, as teenagers, our childhood innocence gives way to the disappointments and tribulation of adulthood. If this sounds pretentious that's because it is, wildly so, but one has to give Waters some credit for not simply churning out a "Heathers" clone ("Jawbreaker" did us that favor). And while the characters are nowhere near as nihilistic as in that film (more so they are skewered stereotypes), the film does, particularly in the second half, move into bleak territory. The film's primary saving grace, besides a typically biting screenplay from Waters, is his outstanding casting, notably Stormare, Swain, Renfro and, particularly, the underused Bergl, all of whom deliver fine performances but struggle with the main flaw in Waters' script, none of the characters are very likable. It's not a great film, in fact it is a very flawed one, but it is never anything but ambitious and frequently very funny. It also makes an interesting double bill with "Wet Hot American Summer", another off-the-wall satire on the genre released the same year. Let's just hope we don't have to wait so long for his next film.