Happy Campers

source: Happy Campers

Moviecut—Happy Campers

"Welcome to 'Camp Bleeding Dove', where seven hot-blooded college freshmen are left in charge of dozens of high-maintenance campers. When 'Chief Oberon' (Peter Stormare), the camp's only responsible adult, is hit by lightning, it's a hormonal free-for-all as the counselors 'Wichita' (Brad Renfro) and 'Wendy' (Dominique Swain) score with each other while trying to control the underage masses. At the end of 40 days, everyone is guaranteed memories that will last a lifetime!" promises the DVD sleeve description. Debuting director Daniel Waters' teen sex comedy is alternately appealing, embarrassing, teasing, and stupid. Unfortunately, emphasis is firmly on the latter. ** Happy Campers (1/21/01) Daniel Waters ~ Brad Renfro, Dominique Swain, Jaime King, Justin Long

And I mean that in a bad way. "Happy Campers" is not just another summer camp flick which is about sex and s'mores and sex and food fights and sex and water sports and sex and counselor pranks and sex and Kumbaya, etc. No, this loser is about sex and sex and sex and sex and sex and sex and sex. Not creative and fresh sex stuff but stupid, infantile, and boring sex stuff. "Happy Campers" is a flick only a sexually preoccupied juvenile could love. Another blotch on Swain's resume, files this one under "D" for dog. (D+)

"Happy Campers" is a useful movie only because it prompts basic questions about its writer/director Daniel Waters and his breakout film "Heathers" (which he wrote but did not direct). Did he use up all his good stuff writing the Heathers screenplay and have nothing left for "Happy Campers? Did he lose most of his active brain cells shortly after making Heathers (an event that would account for both the 'Hudson Hawk"and the "Happy Campers" screenplays)? Was Heathers just a happy accident? Or is Heathers so open-ended that critics and viewers attributed significance to a very ordinary movie. All these explanations are possible either jointly or collectively. For "Happy Campers" Waters tries to weave "Breakfast Club" themes into a "Meatballs" story. So you get tedious voice-over suggestions about how the artificial bounds of the high school hierarchy can sometimes be bridged by spending a couple months together as summer camp counselors. Like each detention server in "The Breakfast Club", each counselor is an easily identified stereotype. And over the course of camp each is supposed to go through changes, at least that appears to be the premise. Unfortunately the script has difficulty communicating this process despite an unprecedented amount of voice-over narration. All seven of the main characters get some voice-over time, a device that is very confusing and pretty much destroys any possibility of the movie having any unified theme. Dominique Swain has the biggest part as Wendy, the terminally peppy cheerleader type (appropriately pictured in a cheerleader outfit on the DVD). Swain is the only good thing about the movie, it is an over-the-top caricature that plays to her acting strengths. This is the type of role Swain should be playing, one that requires self-parody rather than subtlety. She also benefits by relative comparsion to James (Jaime) King-whose acting skills are in the Kathy Ireland mold, as well as from being paired with the physically miscast Brad Renfro-who manages to drain all energy from each scene in which he appears. The other four counselors have a fair about of screen time and some lame misadventures but nothing particularly memorable. Some effort is made to introduce the actual summer campers to the story but none of it even remotely works. "Meatballs" was able to get away with shallow character development because it was basically just a Bill Murray vehicle. Although Swain might have been able to carry the whole thing like Murray the script does not allow this and things never really get going in "Happy Campers". Waters apparently believed that audiences would react positively to a movie where 90% of the comedy involved sexual references that most preteens would consider moronic. Hey Daniel, did you pay someone to write that Heathers" screenplay for you.

I picked up this movie solely because Dominique Swain is in it. But the movie was a major disappointment on many accounts. Especially on the comedy side. I didn't laugh a single time throughout the entire movie. And you would think that with Dominique Swain, Justin Long and Peter Stomare that you would be in for at least a somewhat enjoyable movie. But alas, no, "Happy Campers" didn't deliver where it counted. The story is about a summer camp where the camp director is injured in a lightning accident, and it is up to the college student camp counselors to step up and run the camp in the directors absence. For a comedy "Happy Campers" was disturbingly devoid of laughs and funny situations. And it was as if director Daniel Waters just wanted to focus on the sexual situations that he may or may not have experienced in camp himself. As such, the movie sank from mediocrity right into downright ludicrous stupidity. This movie isn't worth the time or effort, and there are far better movies available in this late teen/early adult comedy genre.

Spoilers herein. Films have the same mystery as love: you find the best experiences in the most unlikely places. This movie gives the impression of a Bull Murray stupidity: teenagers and sex along the lines of `Breakfast Club.' Its underscored by using C and D list actors. That's too bad, because this can be seen as fairly intelligent. Daniel Waters writes films that seem to saturate their home genre, yet transcend them in ways more subtle than parody or the faddish irony. His stance is pretty abstract. Take another look at `Hudson Hawk,' where he explores the very coherence of representation and cosmology from the twinkle in Willis' eye. Look at `Batman Returns,' the one where Tim Burton decided to do it right and intelligently. Now look at this in the context of the book, `Lolita.' That wasn't the first book that was about writing and untrusted narrative. It wasn't the first one where you were fooled into thinking about the story as a distraction while the author plays with how you perceive it. But it was the first one that really worked at a level of subliminal metanarrative. In that story, Humbert imagines that Dolores was engaged in wild sex as a 12 year old at camp. He removes her from camp to begin his own reality-bending obsession. His notion of child-sex is purified, innocent. Now look what we have here: a film about sex at a preteen camp, starring the same girl who recently played Lolita (Dolores), with a single obsessed adult, and lots of exploration of an abstract sort of sex. Very risky approach; very few will get it. But check out the name: Camp Weeping Dove. Check out the names, Wendy (`Peter Pan'), Pixel (and her crowns), and Oberon (`Midsummer Night's Dream'). Jasper and Talia have several classical associations. Check out the oddly out of place secondary stories about child abuse (Witchita, and `don't touch me'). Did you get the items mentioned in the scavenger hunt? Dominique Swain puzzles me. She does many of these quirky indies like Parker Posey. But no one knows they are clever. Here, she works her butt off, with an energy that shows that there must be a breakthrough project somewhere in her future, Ted's evaluation: 3 of 3 - Worth Watching.

"Happy Campers" is by far the best teen movie i have ever seen! It's nothing like the typical, American Pie, it has it's own genre of great camp movies! This movie isn't supposed to be some Oscar contender, it's campy, funny and dirty! The film takes place at a summer camp and follows the lives of the camp councellors during one summer. Sex is all they can think about, and the movie ends up with everyone getting laid! This movie has everything you could want in a movie, humour, drugs, sex and bad language! and James King is naked in it! all in all, rent it if you can, it will be worth it!

i love the bitter un-Hollywood ending...life sucks and this movie tells it like it is....but secretly i weep b/c i myself am a hopeless romantic *sniffle, sniffle* sigh this movie really touches on that great feeling you have as a child...and the torturous existence of growing up. I haven't seen heathers as of now...but this movie makes me want to see it. These actors do a very superb acting job(even if the dialouge is somewhat typical at times). All in all it can be said that this movie will make you feel and probably make you remember that first real love...and it i slipped through your hands I highly recommend this movie to anyone who has ever felt frustrated by life.....

As a camp counselor and former camper myself, I've gotta say this is probably my favorite movie. It just combines so many elements of humor, dark comedy, sex, drugs, and angst, that it actually borders on realistic. Of course, it is extremely exaggerated, but in the best way. For those of you out there that enjoy dark indie comedies with hot college co-eds, this is a great film. And for those of you out there that have counseled at summmer camps, this is definately a must see!