Is it a sign of aging or do actors over 70 always play characters who are living with regrets?
That’s the message we get from “Summer Camp,” another “Book Club”-like comedy from Diane Keaton.
Listen now and subscribe: | | | |
Here, she’s one of three friends since grade school who hold a reunion at the summer camp they held dear. The three haven’t been as close as they once were, but this gathering could change all that. Or not.
Kathy Bates plays an over-the-top self-help author who wheels up in a bus made for rock stars; Alfre Woodard is a medical worker who regrets not getting a doctorate. Together, the three zipline, tease the boys they once liked and talk about what might have been.
Considering “Theater Camp” and “Wet Hot American Summer” mined so much from this setting, “Summer Camp” could have been so much more.
Even Beverly D’Angelo, who was one of the camp’s mean girls, doesn’t get the lines or moments that could amount to anything. Only Josh Peck (as one of the camp employees) makes you care about him and that’s because he calls out one of the trio as she tries to control a situation.
Keaton, oddly enough, blends into the background, never quite doing her Keaton thing (outside of costuming); Woodard seems like she’s in a much darker film. And Eugene Levy as a Harry Hamlin-level hunk? Yeah, you’ll gulp, too.
Listen now and subscribe: | | | |
Only Bates jumps in headfirst and that could be because she’s given a brassy red wig and that oh-so-noticeable bus.
Directed by Castille Landon, “Summer Camp” needs some of the zaniness that even “Poms” (an earlier, equally weak Keaton film) had.
Thanks to Keaton, these aging stars films (“80 for Brady,” “Mack & Rita”) have become a genre that didn’t need to be. Instead of showing how vibrant actors of a certain age are, they all lean into regrets and a last-ditch effort to seize what might have been. They’re high predictable and hardly worth the talent they attract.
Thus, “Summer Camp.”
Keaton, who’s also a producer, could do herself and her friends a service by demanding something a little more complex than a paint-by-numbers comedy. “Harry and Tonto” gave Art Carney a boost; “Grumpy Old Men” lit a candle under Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.
This, however, is merely designed to give the actors work without harming their images or taxing their abilities.
Somehow, you want to think those retirement years can bring much, much more.
Movies in a minute with film critic Bruce Miller
Movies in a Minute: "Saturday Night"
Movies in a Minute: "Joker: Folie `a Deux"
Movies in a Minute: "Megalopolis"
Movies in a Minute: "Transformers One"
Movies in a Minute: "Speak No Evil"
Movies in a Minute: "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice"
Movies in a Minute: "Reagan"
Movies in a Minute: "Blink Twice"
Movies in a Minute "Alien: Romulus"
Movies in a Minute: "It Ends With Us"
Movies in a Minute: "Trap"
Movies in a Minute: "Deadpool & Wolverine"
Movies in a Minute: "Twisters"
Movies in a Minute "Maxxxine"
Movies in a Minute "Despicable Me 4"
Movies in a Minute "A Quiet Place: Day One"
Movies in a Minute: "Thelma"
Movies in a Minute: "Inside Out 2"
Movies in a Minute "Bad Boys: Ride or Die"
Movies in a Minute: "Jim Henson Idea Man”
Movies in a Minute: "Summer Camp"
Movies in a Minute: "The Blue Angels"
Movies in a Minute: "Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes"
Movies in a Minute: "The Fall Guy"
Movies in a Minute: "Challengers"
Movies in a Minute: "Abigail"
Movies in a Minute: "Civil War"
Movies in a Minute: "Monkey Man"
Movies in a Minute: "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire"
Movies in a Minute: "Late Night With the Devil"
Movies in a Minute: "Snack Shack"
Movies in a Minute: "Cabrini"
Movies in a Minute "Dune: Part Two"
Movies in a Minute: "Drive-Away Dolls"
Movies in a Minute "Bob Marley: One Love"
Movies in a Minute: "Lisa Frankenstein”
Movies in a Minute: “The Greatest Night in Pop”
Movies in a Minute: "Poor Things"
Movies in a Minute: Best Actress nominee Sandra Huller