Review of Camp Nowhere (1994) by Chris W — 09 Sep 2012

For anyone who ever had to attend some sort of summer camp as a youth, you might find something to enjoy with this light heart comedic fantasy.

Nerdy Morris "Mud" Himmel is not enthused about the prospect of having to spend the summer at a boring, generic computer camp. His friends are equally as unenthusiastic about being sent to their special summer camps as well, which include a theater camp, military camp, and fat camp.

Things take a turn for the awesome though when Mud gets the idea to create their own, secret camp. To pull this off, they enlist the help of crazy high school drama teacher Dennis Van Welker who acts as mentor and camp counselor when they create the camp of their dreams at a former hippie commune.

It's the ultimate summer fantasy come to life. There are basically no rules (save for not getting caught), and, best of all, no adults are in charge, save for maybe Dennis, but even he only marginally counts as an adult authority figure type.

Things start off great like you might expect, with the kids going totally wild. Of course, reality does set in, and the kids must come to terms with life, and, whether they like it or not, their coming of age might be fun, but it won't be without tough times and valuable life lessons.

This is a fun movie, and I really loved it as a kid. Back then though, I wasn't viewing movies through the lens of both enjoyment and artistic merit. As such, this movie isn't as great as I remember, and is indeed, really formulaic and predictable. But it's still a lot of fun though, and can be enjoyed even more when looked at through the lens of 90s kitsch, of which this film is overflowing.

The acting is pretty typical of kid's movie (by and large), but it's not the worst thing in the world either. Plus, they managed to get a really notable cast of adult actors, including Christopher Lloyd as Van Welker, Thomas F. Wilson as a lawman, M. Emmett Walsh as a different lawman, Wendy Makkena (the shy nun from the Sister Act movies), Star Trek alums Kate Mulgrew and Jonathan Frakes as parents of some of the kids, and, in a brief cameo, Burgess Meredith as an old hippie who instills his ideas of freedom into Mud.

The cast is there, the concept is there, so had the script and the acting also been a little better, then yeah, this could conceivably been a fondly remembered cult classic instead of a slightly above average youth romp.

Look, I like this movie, but will admit that it's really not all that special. It's a lot of fun, and certainly not boring, but there are far better kid oriented films of the 90s that stick to the ribs better than this one. It's still a noble effort, though.