A truly bizarre film. It has the premise of a heart-warming family comedy, with a troop of little kids and an earnest scout master who wants to instil love of the outdoors in some sheltered suburbanites (with the expected undertone of weird US nationalist propaganda American films like this seem legally obligated to have). But while it more or less delivers the by the book plot and emotional beats you'd imagine such a film would have, it does so with constant swearing, lewd dialogue, and a slew of adult characters who seem to have wandered in from a National Lampoon movie. Even with this jarring hodgepodge, there were dramatic beats that were cheesy but would have been serviceable enough if they had done the absolutely bare minimum to develop the characters. Randy and Kirk are brothers but have no relationship and nothing whatsoever is offered to explain why Randy loves their father's scout mission so much while Kirk is not just indifferent, he hates the entire concept of nature. You expect some kind of backstory to eventually come up, but it never does, even when the pair have a serious scene together. There's nothing to invest in.
I don't understand who this movie is for or for whom it would even be appropriate. Overall it can only appeal to kids and stars five too many ten year-olds for teenagers to be interested, but it's from the perspective of the adults and full of adult jokes (not just rude, but rude and jaded in ways kids won't find funny). There's also a bunch of irreverent religious 'humour' coexisting with a weird conservative streak as if events were taking place simultaneously in a John Waters movie and in the land of Leave it to Beaver. It really is like two completely different scripts with wildly different sensibilities crashed into each other at high speed and somehow merged.
It's not totally joyless, I did actually laugh a bit, even if more often out of shock and confusion than at punchlines. The actors seem equally uncertain what kind of tone they should be going for, though they make an admirable attempt to give it energy and momentum. Two major characters carrying most of the emotional load of the story are mute for no adequately explained reason and this compounds the already profound issue of lack of character development. Patton Oswalt was just boring and flat and the only one who tries to play it as if it were that milquetoast family film throughout, while everyone else at least commits to the insanity level that seems necessary. He can't really act and he doesn't get to be funny so I don't know what the thinking was, all I know is he failed to carry this movie and there are three people who could have done better right there in the cast. I had to watch it through my fingers out of second hand embarrassment at times and I'm left wondering how on earth this happened.
