Theater Camp

I was never a theater kid, but I’ve always thought of myself as adjacent to that subculture. I spent a bunch of time hanging out with stage actors and techies in high school and college. While none went on to make it their career (although one friend did further her studies in NYC and continued performing), those myriad hangouts and conversations gave me a sense of the community. The spontaneity, the intensity, the goofiness, and a bunch of other traits I can identify but not really put into words. The group dynamics and general surrogate family atmosphere felt very of a piece with pep band, another large group I spent a bunch of time hanging out with although never partook in.

Which is to say that I sit in a weird place with relation to a film like this. While I’m definitely not in the target audience, I feel like I have a baseline understanding of it. It’s an outside looking in perspective, which mean it’s inherently limited, absolutely. But while I’m certain there was plenty which flew over my head, many of the tropes and archetypes and happenings felt familiar.

Theater Camp finds AdirondACTS, a theater-focused summer camp, in some trouble. For one, the camp’s beloved founder and director Joan Rubinsky (Amy Sedaris) has fallen into a coma, leaving her wannabe influencer son Troy (Jimmy Tatro, a real-life influencer/YouTuber) in charge. Upon arrival, he quickly finds the camp is drowning in debt, and is mere weeks away from foreclosure, threatening the entire summer experience. Meanwhile, former campers and long-tenured camp counselors/teachers Amos (Ben Platt) and Rebecca-Diane (Molly Gordon) are trying to continue their tradition of writing the premier play of the summer, this time based around Joan’s life and called Joan, Still. Which they have yet to start when campers arrive.

While the camp is for the kids, the story is driven by the adults. Amos and Rebecca-Diane are the focal point both narratively and emotionally, although we also spend a good time watching Troy flail around. Which gets even more amusing as he has no idea how to react to the bizarre and socially inept interest of Caroline Krauss (Patti Harrison), a representative from the company backing their rival camp for rich kids, Camp Lakeside, who wishes to “rescue” AdirondACTS from foreclosure.

As such, there’s this interesting split, in that in theory the movie is playing to those who were theater kids, but almost none of the theater kids are fully realized characters. There are some recurring ones, especially those in Joan, Still, but most of the campers are used for jokes. Even then, the real comedy comes from the adults playing off the kids. Either because they’re razzing the kids for going too hard, or because they themselves are over the top. The kids are props for the adults to bounce off of.

Not only that, but even many of the adults are quite thin and somewhat pointless. For example, as much as I love Ayo Edebiri (have I mentioned here that I love Ayo Edebiri? Because I love Ayo Edebiri), and as hilarious as her performance is as the in-over-her-head Janet Welch, she plays no role in the main plot. Similar things can be said about Clive DeWitt (Nathan Lee Graham) and Rita Cohen (Caroline Aaron), amongst others. Sure, all of them help add to the theater personality atmosphere, not to mention a good dose of humor. But it helps to highlight how the size of the core cast makes it difficult to spend enough time with most of them to pay off.

The result is a bunch of small, fairly isolated (albeit funny!) vignettes, which function to bridge between scenes of Troy’s lack of understanding of anything theater (or business) and the slow-moving train wreck that Amos and Rebecca-Diane’s collaboration has become. In general, that’s not a bad thing: fleshing out the camp’s day-to-day is part of making it feel more real and relatable. But it’s used so much that it becomes a very obvious crutch.

That being said, as I’ve alluded to a few times, it does capture that very specific theater kid thing. From the tryhards to the radical honesty to refusing to recognize the counselors’ morning announcements until a certain melody is sung. The eclectic and super sweet and earnest personalities are all there, and they’re certainly quite endearing. It’s warm and inviting to those who belong, and a bit harsh and hostile to outsiders, such as Troy or the Camp Lakside kids, because they’re seen as a threat who don’t “get it”, and rightfully so.

As charming as the film is, it feels like it’s stretching its less than 90 minute runtime. It frequently wanders away from its plot, instead stopping to just celebrate theater kids and theater camp, beginning with the opening montage of home videos featuring snippets of school plays. There’s no problem with celebrating that awesome weirdness, but that it requires halting the rest of the film to do so is distracting, and precludes getting too invested in the story unless you have some in-built connection to it. And so the story feels solid but not very substantial, leading to it feeling uneven and bloated as they pad out its runtime.

Let me wrap up by mentioning the singing, since some of the plays are musicals. The kids are all at least good, and many are great, on top of giving it their all every single chance they get. To say nothing of Noah Galvin as Glenn Winthrop, a character who’s been around the whole time but finally gets the spotlight as the story comes to a close. And while many of the original songs are played entirely for comedy, the closing number is simultaneously very sweet, and touching, and perfectly serves as the finale to Joan, Still, as well as the movie.

Despite my misgivings, I would recommend this movie to most of you, even more strongly if you had any connection to theater. Or even if you’re just looking for a solid comedy, especially since we haven’t gotten a bunch of those this year. It’s well acted and quite charismatic, and a decent bit of fun. You just need to go in expecting it to be light and fluffy, and I bet you enjoy yourself.