Summer Camp (2024) Roadside Attractions/Comedy-Drama RT: 95 minutes Rated PG-13 (sexual material, strong language) Director: Castille London Screenplay: Castille London Music: Tom Howe Cinematography: Karsten “Crash” Gopinath Release date: May 31, 2024 (US) Cast: Diane Keaton, Kathy Bates, Alfred Woodard, Eugene Levy, Dennis Haysbert, Beverly D’Angelo, Nicole Richie, Josh Peck, Betsy Sodaro, Tom Wright, Victoria Rowell, Maria Howell, Taylor Madeline Hand, Kensington Tallman, Audrianna Lico, Gabe Sklar, Zachary Connor, Lindsey Blanchard.
Rating: **
Summer Camp is just another tired Golden Girls Gone Wild comedy starring Diane Keaton and a bunch of other 70+ actors. How many of these movies has Keaton made now? Quite a few. Off the top of my head, I can think of the two Book Club films, Poms and the woeful lost dog story Darling Companion. I still hear “FREEWAY!” in my nightmares.
The only significant difference between Summer Camp and the other titles mentioned is the setting. In this case, it’s a summer camp (hence the title). It’s where introverted preteen Nora first met her two besties, extrovert Ginny and shy Mary, fifty years ago. Rejected by the other girls (aka “The Pretty Committee”), they stuck together like glue. They’ve been friends ever since.
Half a century later, they still keep in touch even though they don’t see much of each other. They have their own lives. Nora (Keaton) is a widowed workaholic with a tendency to cancel plans at the last minute. She hates deviating from her daily routine of work, work and more work. Ginny (Bates, Misery) is a successful self-help guru who wrote a best seller entitled “Get Your S*** Together”. She still likes to control everybody’s narrative. Mary (Woodard, Grand Canyon) had big dreams at one time, but ended up settling. She works as a nurse at a hospital and is married to a controlling husband (Wright, Barbershop 1 & 2) who always expects her to be at his beck and call.
Ginny and Mary show up at Nora’s workplace and force her to join them for a 50-year reunion vacation at their old stomping grounds Camp Pinnacle. It’s supposed to be a chance for the trio to reconnect over traditional summer camp activities like archery, pottery and horseback riding. After arriving and surviving the shock of having to turn over their phones, they encounter their old rival Jane (D’Angelo, the Vacation movies) and her minions. They also see Stevie D (Levy, American Pie) and Tommy (Haysbert, Heat), Nora and Mary’s respective crushes from back in the day. So begins a week of fun, bonding and confronting their dissatisfaction with their lives.
Written and directed by Castille Landon (After Everything), Summer Camp is lame all the way through. It starts off smack-dab in middle of mediocrity and goes absolutely nowhere. It just idles for 95 minutes until it finally conks out. Nobody appears to be making any sort of an effort, especially not reality show star Nicole Richie who plays the camp director. She basically just shows up and reads her lines. That’s it, literally. She almost makes former partner-in-crime Paris Hilton look like an accomplished thespian. The only one who looks like they’re even trying is Josh Peck (Drake & Josh) as a clumsy camp employee who can’t do anything right. He makes some messes.
That leads right into my next point. Nothing that happens in Summer Camp is funny or even mildly amusing. The better word would be forced if the movie wasn’t so lazy and indifferent about its characters and situations. Take the rivalry between the main characters and the popular girls. In any other movie, it would be the main plotline. It would escalate with each group trying to outdo the other before finally settling matters once and for all with some kind of contest. That doesn’t happen here. In fact, this thread isn’t even developed. It’s just introduced and forgotten.
Getting back to the lack of funny in Summer Camp, all attempts at comedy land with a dull thud. The ladies sign up for what they think will be a relaxing lazy river experience. It turns out to be white water rafting. Peck is their guide which means one of the girls will eventually end up in the raging river. LOL… NOT! Another thing, food fights haven’t been funny since Animal House. That goes double when said fight involves senior citizens. It’s just sad and stupid.
It’s too bad Summer Camp went so wrong. It’s not like Landon didn’t have talent to back up her weak screenplay. The three leads have two Oscars, six Emmys and 4 Golden Globes between them. They’re not bad here, but they’re definitely better than the material deserves. Levy is okay as Keaton’s romantic interest. The problem is their relationship, like so many other things in Summer Camp, is underdeveloped.
There is one thing that stands out in this otherwise unremarkable movie. Betsy Sodaro (Ghosts) plays the camp enforcer Vick Cockburn. She’s there to make sure the aged campers follow the rules. She’ll do whatever she has to do to maintain order. I honestly don’t know what to say about her. The character is funny in theory I suppose, but she comes off as creepy and obnoxious instead.
Summer Camp is so mediocre and lazy; I can’t even bring myself to hate it. It’s too much energy to expend on a film that makes zero effort on its part. The only thing it accomplishes is it makes me want to revisit Ernest Goes to Camp and the first two Meatballs movies.
