Review of Happy Campers

Introduction

American Pie breathed new life into an ailing genre, the teen sex comedy, a sort of Porky`s the next generation. 90 minutes of hilarious hi-jinks, but this time the difference was that the characters had heart. American Pie was successful and deservedly so. Unfortunately, that level of success pretty much guaranteed the production of a sequel, and it wasn`t long before the look-a-likes appeared. Happy Campers is one of these clones, one that I don`t remember even getting to the cinema. Once again, a group of adolescents, beginning to explore their sexualities are thrown into the mix together, the `novel` twist being that all these shenanigans take place at that hallowed American institution, Summer Camp.

Wichita, Wendy, Jasper, Talia, Adam, Pixel and Donald are the seven blossoming youths who spend one summer at Camp Bleeding Dove as camp councillors. Under the leadership of Oberon, the camp organiser, they are put in charge of a group of 12 year olds who lie many other American larvae get sent off into the wilderness to promote their self reliance. Under Oberon`s strict and dictatorial regime, the camp activities are regimented and restrictive and it doesn`t take long for the kids and councillors to start to rebel. Before there is outright mutiny, Oberon has an unfortunate coming together with a lightning bolt, and the kids are left in charge, under the blasé leadership of the councillors, who are more concerned with pairing off with each other than keeping control.

Video

This is a very recent film, and of course the picture quality reflects that. A 1.85:1 anamorphic transfer is clear and sharp, with nice strong colours. Daniel Waters writes and directs this affair, and his efforts are satisfactory given the material.

Audio

Happy Campers gets an English DD 5.1 track and it is adequate. This being a comedy, you would expect it to be dialogue intensive, and it is. But I did find moments where the dialogue was drowned out by background noise, people talking over each other or actors mumbling their lines. This wouldn`t have been too bad, but there are no subtitles on this disc. The surround speakers do get a look in, with the music and weather etc. The music itself is instantly forgettable, with some nondescript pop tunes getting ample airplay.

Features

Trailer, no subtitles.

Conclusion

After watching this cheap knock-off of American Pie, I wasn`t a . wait for it . a happy camper! Geddit? You may be groaning, but that little joke is highbrow humour compared to the laughs in the film itself. I might have managed a smile in a couple of places, and a loud exhalation may have been halfway a chuckle rather than a tortured sigh, but my laughter muscles didn`t get a work out from this dull disc. The biggest problems are the characters. They are all pretty much instantly unlikeable from the start of the movie. Brad Renfro plays Wichita, a tortuously dull guy, who for some strange reason is liked by all the kids and is an instant girl magnet. The object of his affection is the Barbie like Wendy, played by Dominique Swain. Wendy is a manic-depressive, with a desperate need to be liked. They use the usual movie metaphor of masochistic tendencies to show that she is damaged goods. Deliberately burning her hand, letting herself get stung, that kind of thing. Naturally there is a transformation from Barbie to Goth before the movie ends. Emily Bergl is Talia, who initially has a crush on Wichita, but as soon as she sorts herself out and gets over it, she is to all intents and purposes, written out of the movie. Pixel is an aesthetically pleasing hippy chick of a girl who provides the `lust` factor in the film. The bizarrely named James King (not the bloke who reviews movies for Radio 1) plays Pixel. However, Pixel is as manipulative and hard-hearted as the other characters and despite her charm is as unlikeable as the rest. The rest are all stereotypes, Justin Long is the nerd, Donald, Jordan Bridges (another generation of the Bridges clan hits the screens) plays the oafish jock Adam, and Keram Malicki-Sanchez plays Jasper the token gay character.

Happy Campers is a wholly unsatisfying experience, with the by now standard mix of gross out humour and teen relationships. Not a single one of the characters is sympathetic at all; they all manipulate and use each other from beginning to end. The film, like many of its ilk is aimed at the wrong audience. By the age of fifteen, most of the audience would be too old to appreciate the infantile humour, exploding frogs, toilet humour, taking the p*** out of the fat kid. The emotional heartaches suffered by the primary characters are a little hard to comprehend. They are nineteen, not fifteen; surely they would have been a little more mature by now. The film ends with a sort of Lord of The Flies cataclysm, where the cast are drenched in a water balloon fight, the camera then focuses on them in a sort of lingering malaise, a metaphorical emotional release after the climax. It`s a strange time for the director to get delusions of arthouse. To wrap it all up, there is a saccharine moral message put across in the last chapter entitled "Excuse the cheese" which boils down to, "Hey, you`re nineteen. Screw around if you want, because eventually you`ll learn responsibility and attain maturity yadda yadda yadda friendship, memories etc" After I had wiped the projectile vomit from my TV screen, I decided to mark Happy Campers thus.