Overall Rating
  Awesome: 60.91%
Worth A Look: 20%
Average: 12.73%
Pretty Bad: 1.82%
Total Crap: 4.55%
2 reviews, 98 user ratings
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| Happy Campers |
by Chris Parry
"For an unreleasable film, it's not half bad."
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Back in the day, Daniel Waters wrote a seminal teen-angst masterpiece, Heathers. Then he wrote a seminal flop, Ford Fairlane. Then he wrote a bunch of other flops, including Batman Returns and Demolition Man. So now, in the new millennium, what is this one-time teen legend doing with himself? Well, along with trying to get Heathers 2 off the ground, he has written and directed an homage to 80's summer camp films, titled Happy Campers. It's a decent film, certainly better than most that get the studio wide-release, and the film reeks of the 'teens on a tear' style that the director showed back in the day when he was young and unknown, but irrespective of its upside, this flick has one mighty downfall. It's virtually unreleasable. You see, this is a film for 12 year olds that no parent would allow their 12 year old to see.And that's a shame, because it's a decent flick. Okay, so it portrays 12 year olds making out and watching older teens having sex. And, yeah, it plays a girl's first menstruation for gross-out laughs. And, sure, there's really no lesson to be learned other than "parents suck" and "boobies are good". But so what? This is entertainment, and if teenagers were allowed to see it, they'd give it the same thumbs up we gave Meatballs when we were kids. I don't know anyone who saw Meatballs and went out to sign up for the Junkie Of The Month club, we simply watched the flick, laughed and farted like silly teens and went home to wish we could wear a sleeveless t-shirt like Matt Dillon.
To its credit, Happy Campers is a film that translates well to an older crowd, and for that reason alone it deserves a small release. Add to that the presence of a recognizable cast - Dominique Swain, Brad Renfro and Peter Stormare being the staples - and a reasonable box office would seem assured if someone would just take a chance on it. Unfortunately, this is an adult film about life as a tweeny and no marketing executive has any clue what sort of demographic breakdown that might work for. The easier option is for them to hammer it to video and hope for some kind of small financial return from the dollar weeklys crowd.
What really makes Happy Campers worth watching is Waters' screenplay. With all the caustic humor that was so evident in film that launched his career, the writer/director has found his teen-angst feet once more. Some of the lines in Happy Campers are hilarious, with a brutal delivery that seems even funnier coming from a 12 year old.Ultimately, you're going to never see this on a big screen. But grab it on video. You'll laugh, and that's more than you'll get out of a Sylvester Stallone movie.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=4401&reviewer=1
originally posted: 01/26/01 19:21:02
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USA
02-Mar-2001 (R)
UK
N/A
Australia
N/A
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