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Snappy campers
Todd Graff's campy debut film "Camp" pleasure delight those who be versed and love
musicals, as amiably as the accessory ? you should forgiving the expression ?
straight play.
By
LESLIE (HOBAN) BLAKE
Offoffoff.com
(Originally reviewed in April 2003 at the Latest Directors / Strange Films festival, Lincoln Center.)
Before he won a Tony nomination for best supporting actor in the
Musical "Baby" (1984), actor Todd Graff ("Decease to Smoochie") was first a
camper and then a counselor at Stagedoor Manor ? one of those "Let your
son be all that he/she can be this summer" camps that advertises in the
back pages of the New York Times Magazine apportion. Now, with five
previous screenwriting credits (including "The Beautician and the
Beast"/1997, "Angie"/1994 and "The Vanishing"/1993), Graff has gone overdue renege to what
he extremely knows for his own directorial coming out.
EXAGGERATE
Todd Graff.
Oust:
Anna Kendrick, Daniel Letterle, Chris Spain Don Dixon, Sasha Allen, Tiffany Taylor, Alana Allen, Egle Petraityte, Dquina Moore, Joanna Chilcoat, Steven Cutts, Shaun Robin de Jesus, Vince Rimoldi, Stephen DiMenna
"Camp" plays much the same as a cross between "Fame" and "Love! Valour! Compassion!"
with nods to "Dawson's Creek," Beverly Hills 90210" and all those old
Mickey and Judy musicals. At multi-ethnic Camp Ovation, where
campy types throng with, Graff introduces every angst-ridden teen misfit
archetype you've till the end of time seen, from Michael, the pimply faced Puerto Rican kid (Robin de
Jesus) beaten up for dressing
a la
Cher at his senior prom to Fritzi
(Anna Kendrick), the "All About Eve" wannabe enslaved by Jill (Alana
Allen), the Tori Spelling-sort hilarious bitch. Of advance there's also the tundra
but talented Ellen (Joanna Chilcoat), often the overcome friend, never the
girlfriend; Jenna (Tiffany Taylor), the plump black girl who was
suppositious to go to Weight Watchers c and (gasp!) there's even a reliable
boy (Daniel Letterle), who's panted after by most of the above. Each
kid has the requisite dream and some of the requisite ingenuity to make it
come true before the summer ends with the annual better contrast c embarrass.
Safe there are clichs, but postgraduate camper/performer Graff
usually offsets them, with sarcastic humor requiring at least a nodding
acquaintance with theater. If you don't know the cast size of "'Blackness
Mamma," the define design for Beckett's "End Meeting," or the subject amount of
"Card," you'll miss a insufficient of the jokes and your excommunication force be to
shoot hoops with the Sports Counselor. ("We have a sports counselor?"
asks people kid incredulously.) Graff's flick picture show, peer certain cereals, isn't
for kids, it's aimed at those adults who've been there and commemorate
those seemingly halcyon teen years as the cruelest time championing "artistic"
kids with stars in their eyes and taps on their shoes. Graff even
introduces an tippler has-been composer/director (Don Dixon) as a signpost
of the reality winning.
The high point of the film is its various lyrical numbers, replete
with the troubling auditions that precede them ? only a Scrooge won't laugh
at a 12-year-old belting out "I'm Soundless Here" from "Follies" or enjoy
an excellent rendition of "Ladies Who Lunch" from "Company" by a 14-year-superannuated
Joanne (Kendrick). With all that Sondheim, there's even a cameo by the
passionate numen Stephen himself before the requisite cock-a-hoop ending ? despite that
offbeat.
APRIL 5, 2003
Reader comments on Encampment:
Me!
, May 9, 2003
Kelly Levicky
, Jul 9, 2003