Gorp - Zorra Total

'80s camp comedy in the vein of Meatballs. I haven't seen Meatballs since I was a kid, but I have to imagine it's quite a bit better than this dud. There are a handful of young actors who would go on to be pretty big (notably Dennis Quaid, Fran Drescher and Rosanna Arquette), but that's about the only reason to watch. It's comprised of a bunch of semi-related sketches. There are several lazy plot lines, only like one of which gets resolved by the end. The main characters, played by Michael Lambeck and Philip Casnoff, are awful, loudmouth, Italian stereotypes, and you just want to smack them in the face in every scene. Really, all the males in the movie are pigs and borderline rapists. There are some very pretty girls in the film (yes, even Fran Drescher was quite hot when she was in her early 20s), but they hardly figure in it. It's all about the boys acting obnoxiously. Of the future stars, Dennis Quaid has the biggest role as a guy obsessed with guns, explosives and fireworks. He's damn annoying, too, although at least he has a bit of charisma, unlike Lambeck and Casnoff.

If Meatballs had been written by a coked-up, mentally-challenged Jew, it might resemble something like GORP. What GORP stands for, I have no idea. Greatly Odiferous Retarded Premise? It might've been mentioned in the movie, but I was so annoyed by the lack of good comedy writing, the bad Vinnie Babarino accents and the absence of anything remotely resembling a plot that I might've missed it.

I thought at the least I might get to see some Fran Drescher nipps or a young Patricia Arquette burn up the screen. Wrong wrong wrong. The scenes of Fran "doing it" with camp counselers fully clothed resembled two people having a simultaneous seizer on the ground. I couldn't even tell which characters were even camp counselers, there were no scenes of them doing ANYTHING remotely camp related. You just want to punch every character in this movie in the face, hard. There are no peaks or valleys, no character development at all, it's just non-stop cracked out stupidity from the very start, and not even funny stupidity at that. I have to wonder how the writer of this movie even got his foot in the door, and I'd be surprised if he ever worked again.

Even treating it like an X-rated movie and fast-forwarding to the few scenes with Fran and the one or two scenes with Arquette didn't make it any more bearable. 40 minutes of my life I'll never get back. Comcast On-Demand freebies have really hit rock bottom. I'm canceling my cable.

I can't say what's worse...the fact that this movie was made, or the fact that so many reviewers here actually think it was good.

"Gorp" (1980) is a comedy film that's set mostly in a camp cafeteria, but it misses the mark on humor. It's really not that funny and it's actually pretty disgusting, especially with the way food is defiled. The film relies on outdated ideas that haven't aged well. Most of the jokes fall flat, and the setting doesn't help. It's not particularly risqué, except for a projector scene that's totally NC-17. Overall, "Gorp" feels very average and boring, not warranting much attention. While it has a few moments, it ultimately fails to deliver a memorable or enjoyable experience. Also, Dennis Quaid is in it.

I never went to camp as a kid, but I still have an affection for a lot of these "summer camp movies" of the late 70's/early 80's. This one, however, is pretty worthless. It's not funny like "Meatballs". It's not politically incorrect like "Little Darlings". It's not nudity and sex-saturated like "Summer Camp" and "The First Turn-On". And unlike "Friday the 13th", "The Burning", and "Sleepaway Camp", it doesn't even have Jason or somebody like that around to kill off these unfunny and irritating characters and put them out of my misery. The only innovative aspect to it is that it's supposedly set at a Jewish summer camp (even though half the cast is obviously not Jewish).

The director Joseph Ruben generally had an impressive exploitation career aside from this, directing everything from "The Pom-Pom Girls" to "The Stepfather", and he later found some mainstream success in the 1990's. This is probably his worst movie though (OK, "Sleeping with the Enemy" might have been worse, but THAT had Julia Roberts in it). As for the cast, this does include early career missteps by such notables by Dennis Quaid, Roseanne Arquette, and Fran Drescher (although the latter's entire career was pretty much a misstep). Quaid, like all the male characters here, is flat-out annoying as a military-obsessed weirdo. Roseanne Arquette is very cute and adorable in her first role, but she has virtually screen time. Drescher meanwhile, while she has never been unattractive and is not nearly as annoying here as she would become some years later, plays the camp nympho who "does" everybody (including a rabbi!) without actually ever taking off her clothes. I would have vastly preferred this role had gone to some anonymous bimbo who was willing to disrobe. And speaking of bimbos, Debi frickin' Richter is also in the cast. She was "Miss California 1975" and had one of the best bodies around back then (see her in the movie "Hot Moves"), but you get to see exactly none of it here.

I almost never COMPLETELY pan movies because I almost never watch movies in the first place if I have any inkling that they're going to COMPLETELY suck. I was fooled by this one though. Don't make the same mistake. See any of the movies I mentioned above (well, except maybe "Sleeping with the Enemy") instead.

Imagine someone right next to you jumping up and down while screaming non-stop into your ear, with plenty of vulgar words peppered in his speech, and you will have an idea of what it's like to watch GORP. You might think that with all that energy put forward there would at least be a few laughs, but think again - there's not one laugh here! There isn't even a jovial spirit on display, just a feeling of mean-spiritedness and even pure rage. Not only that, its sense of "humor" is downright offensive at times. The only bit of interest it offers is a display of yet-to-be-famous talent. (P.S. - For some reason, my original post of these comments was taken down since someone thought it was "abuse". It's not abuse - I'm simply telling it like it is.)