Theater Camp - Review Thread

The movie Theater Camp was this year’s heavily buzzed Sundance film to come out and wildy underperform when put in actual theaters though it was perhaps better received than such similarly themed Sundance flops as Son of Rambow or Hamlet 2. The film is set at a summer camp for “theater kids” that’s doing one of its annual productions. This year’s summer session has something of a pall over it as the camp’s beloved founder is in a coma and in her place her 20-something year old son Troy, a Post Malone loving bro who’s ignorant of the theater world, is running things. The film is really, really, really obviously inspired by the works of Christopher Guest and comparisons are particularly invited to his 1996 film Waiting for Guffman. That film looked at a similarly ramshackle theater production but was set at an adult community theater rather than a children’s camp, which allowed for a little more cruelty towards its character than what they’re really able to get away with in this setting, where having people fall on their face at the end is not really a fun option. In general the film fits the Christopher Guest mold fine, in fact it would be fair to say it does it better than actual Christopher Guest has in quite a long time. Side note: what ever happened to Christopher Guest? Anyway, where the movie starts to go wrong is in indulging this contrived plotline in its second half about the camp being in danger of losing its lease and getting bought out by an evil developer which is clichéd unnecessary nonsense, but that doesn’t torpedo the film which remains relatively charming.