Happy Campers (2001)

Worth Seeing
I liked this movie. I lose interest in almost all movies half-way through, but this one kept me watching. The cinematography is excellent; the colors and lighting are nice to look at. The characters are attractive, interesting and funny. It's not 'Meatballs,' and it's not 'Lolita,' or even a combination of the two. It's a unique film.

A Big Waste of Time
"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 comparison 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.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

If went to summer camp you'll love this
What I mean to say is that if you've done the camp thing before and are of a propper age, you'll understand and like this movie. Some of the humor in this is not meant for the young on's. Ive been going to summer camp since I was 7 and have since worked at that camp. I'm 11 years older (I'm 18 now) and wiser; I know the dark sexually drived stuff on the part of the staffers, about how at night u get with your fellow staffers and talk about the opposite sex, sex, and sexuality in general. That's exactly what this movie is with its seven 19yr old staff members, each with their first year of college and extreme persona behind them. The staff does try to hide the darker things (well, no, that's not exactly true) infact, i like the movie so much because all the campers knew what was going on with staff (better than the staff at times) and all real summer campers know to evesdrop on the cool older staff. The staffers in the movie find the naitivity around them charming and indulge their campers' curiosities and questions; either that or they have no control over their emotional outbursts. It actually is a sweet, well-acted, dark comedy. About summer love (gag me with a spoon), fate (double gag me) but mainly about the relationships between staffers, campers, and how the two groups mingle. Anyway, part of it is about first love but it is not mushy romance, guys and girls alike will enjoy this, and while it wont be the camp you went to, u recognize the components of the movie that relate to your camp. and it's just hysterical. The movie IS camp condensed into an hour and a half with different aesthetics. So, yeah, i love this movie, me and my camp buddies get a kick out of it, i hope this helps
Oh, if you're a fan of Heathers (made by the same guy) like me then you wont be disapointed with this, unless u liked all the suicides in Heathers and find them a necessity for a film to be enjoyable