We’re back to our month of summer camp, and this time around, we’re going to a camp with a theme! Some camps are designed around space, some around sports, others are designed to help you overcome certain abhorrent behaviors, but many are just there to body shame little kids into trying to attain a ‘normal’ weight. Thanks to Disney, we get to look at a movie about just such a camp!
 |
| Ahh.... 264,600 pixels of All-American insensitivity. |
I’m not going to lie. I expected this film to pretty light-hearted, and for the most part, it was, kind of… It was just also a little insulting, that’s all. We start with our main hero Gerry on his last day of school. He’s exiting the building and talking to a friend about plans for the summer when they both notice that Gerry’s bus has left without him. Gerry tries in vain to catch up by chasing it, but can’t because, and this is a running theme for at least the next six minutes, he’s the fat kid. We see Gerry walking home, and getting chased by a dog, to the enjoyment of the dog’s owner, who has it on a leash. Then we see Gerry attempt multiple times to throw a baseball over a six foot fence unsuccessfully, because he’s the fat kid. After Gerry gets home, his parents blindside him with a meeting they set up with a salesman who’s convinced them to send Gerry to camp because he’s the fat kid. It’s a fat camp, and Gerry totally calls them out on it, but when you’re twelve, your will is not your own.
So Gerry goes to camp, and while he’s on the plane, he meets another camper who’s also overweight, and who, for some reason, makes grossly general assumptions about Gerry’s personal life based on Gerry’s outward appearance. For instance, the other guy mistakes the man in the seat next to Gerry’s as being Gerry’s father because the man is also fat. Dude, seriously? Anyway, they arrive at the airport, and we’re quickly introduced to Pat, the eternal camp counselor. Seriously, the guy has spent 18 consecutive summers at the camp. He’s the super cool and fun role model type whom all the boys look up to despite the fact that he’s spent the better part of two decades attending the same camp. But, really, Pat is a pretty cool guy. And you can tell he’s a pretty cool guy because he swears. Not like a sailor, or anything, but he does bust out some PG zingers from time to time. Anyway, there’s a lot of banter, and you know it’s all in good fun, but that’s probably because as an adult, Pat has mastered his sarcastic voice.
There’s a lot of hype over how fun this camp is, and if I’m being honest with myself, the video, and the anecdotal information does make it seem pretty cool. There’s go carting, and this giant balloon thing that the kids use to launch each other into a lake while swimming. Okay, I’m not exactly down with the swimming, but the go carts sound like fun. The kids all arrive, and not surprisingly, all of the interesting characters end up in the same bunk house. At this point, we get to see the kind of camp this place really is because the boys all start whipping out all of the fattening, sugary contraband that they’ve smuggled in, and they’ve got some pretty professionally built looking hiding places for all of this stuff, too. What I’m saying is that this Camp Hope, as they call it, is more like ‘Camp Enabler’. “It’s a good camp,” the kids might say. “That’s not what your LDL levels are telling me,” their doctors would probably say.
At any rate, we’re introduced to the rest of our camp buddies, most of whom are just background noise throughout this movie because we don’t want to overload the film with too many characters competing for attention. You know what? I’m okay with that, actually. The most utilized campers besides Gerry are Josh, played by Shaun Weiss, who you would more readily recognize from The Mighty Ducks movies, and Roy, who’s played by Kenan Thompson, and who you would probably more readily recognize because he’s on Saturday Night Live now. Roy is the plucky sidekick who’s there for moral support, and Josh is the class clown. The rest of the cast are pretty much just movie tropes. There’s the intellectual kid who has a rival in the group that just happens to be British. There’s the quiet kid. And… Actually, that’s pretty much it. There may be others involved, but they’re all really forgettable. That got me wondering why there were so many throw away characters in this movie. Then we got to the second act…
 |
| Say hello to your second act. |
In fact, that is Ben Stiller. His dad, Jerry, plays the original owner of Camp Hope. Jerry’s character trusted his financial advisor a little too much, lost everything, and sold the farm to Ben’s character, Perkis. Perkis has a first name, but I’m too lazy to remind myself what it was, and besides, I came up with a great nickname for him, Jerkis! Sometimes I just slay myself! Anyway, Jerkis, who shall heretofore always be italicized, is a late 20th century health guru who is attempting to use Camp Hope as a scheme to make a quick buck by selling its services via late night infomercials. I’m not exaggerating when I say that he is the entire second act. He decides that what these spoiled campers need is a little tough love, and so he does an initial weigh-in, and then proceeds to use every late 90s gimmick in the book to help them lose weight. There’s diet, and then there’s these… things…
Which are apparently still a thing? Huh. Jerkis really lives up to his name depending on who you ask. He dismantles all of the go carts, takes away all of the junk food, and pops the Blob!
 |
| This monstrosity. |
He does also use some pretty underhanded psychological abuse to try to persuade his campers to take their journey seriously. Like that time that he invited a bunch of cute, but awkward 90s pre-teens to a dance with all the fat kids, and then let the ensuing awkwardness do what it was inevitably going to do. Seriously though, Jerkis does take things way too far. You just don’t see any of it until the end of the second act. Then the kids rebel, they lock Jerkis in a holding cell and they do things their way. Which basically involves eating literally all of the junk food within a one hundred mile radius to the camp. Now, I’m not defending the over-the-top things that Jerkis did, but he was the only person in the camp that was trying to take an active role in helping these boys actually lose weight. The Camp Hope counselors were pretty much just there to help the boys feel like their obesity was not that bad. Jerkis was trying to help them realize that they needed to take control of themselves to lead a more fulfilling life. Even if that message got lost in some really crazy attitudes. Also, Jerkis hired this guy! At the end of the day though, Jerkis’s dad, also played by Ben Stiller, has to come take him home for some much needed counseling sessions.
 |
| Disney should make a movie just about this guy! |
That’s Lars, and he’s by far my favorite character from this whole movie! He’s super ripped, but he’s also super goofy, and just as awkward as the boys. It’s great.
The final act of the film is comprised of the boys preparing to face off against the athletic camp in a competition for bragging rights. There’s an obstacle course, a knowledge triathlon, and a go cart race. I have to admit that the director, and the editor arranged things so that it at least seemed like it was a close race. Although you’re going to see a lot of jocks are dumb tropes here. But it is exciting up to the very end. However, because this is a feel good Disney film, the big boys win! Then the jocks throw a tantrum and get marginalized.
This is a really polarizing movie for me. On the one hand, I know that is was just a popcorn flick that Disney just released as fodder for the really slow post holiday movie season. It was probably meant to get kids excited about the upcoming summer when Disney would, no doubt, be releasing some of their bigger films. Ergo, I know that I should take the whole thing with a giant grain of salt. However, it does a couple of things just right enough that I feel pretty comfortable taking it a little more seriously in some regards. The best example is Jerkis. The guy is a psycho for sure, but we as the viewer get some insights into why he’s psychotic. You get to see that he was ostracized as a kid, and that his dad was really hard on him growing up. All of that is offset by the fact that he mostly grew up in a social bubble created by his parents’ wealth. It’s actually kind of deep. Also, Stiller does a phenomenal job playing a satire of your stereotypical infomercial salesperson. And then, the parts that were supposed to be funny, are actually pretty funny. Oh, and there’s some sick use of classical music in this movie, y’all. It’s off the hook, as some might say. Lastly, the structure of the film was very well defined. We spend the first act seeing our heroes struggle with their man-versus-self obesity issues. The second act is man-versus-man in the form of the campers versus Jerkis. This resolves itself in the one act. Then the last act is the competition that was alluded to earlier in the film, and the resolution of that event ties everything together pretty nicely.
Then we get to theme. And this is where the movie really starts to lose me. On one hand, the movie spends a lot of time showing how miserable it is to be overweight. I wasn’t exactly the overweight kid when I was younger, but I’ve definitely packed on a few pounds in recent years, and so it’s confusing to me to see a movie point out how ridiculously demoralizing it can be to be that guy, and then lace that with criticisms of being a healthier weight. Movie needs to make up its G-darn mind already! You can’t tell us that it stinks to be fat, and then turn around and also tell us that it stinks to be skinny. Those two messages conflict. Now some of you might say that the movie was trying to tell kids to be happy and confident in who they are. I’ll let you have that, but as exhibit ‘A’ in my argument against your hippy dippy musings, I present this:
HOLY CRAP! That’s the guy that played Josh in the movie! And he looks great! I’m not trying to body shame here. Buy what I am trying to say is that if you’re going to make a movie about the struggles of obesity, you should maybe try to make the message something along the lines of, “Being a healthy weight is good. Having self-discipline is good.” And not, “Being fat stinks, but being skinny also stinks.” It’s a complex message that could have been explored way more effectively, but that got minimized and boiled down to a confusing parody of itself in the end. Instead of thinking about the message that this movie was going to send and trying to send a balanced and helpful message, Disney thought about all the Coca Cola they were going to want to sell that summer at their theme parks are made something with less negative financial implications. I am shaming Disney a little bit here.
No comments:
Post a Comment