Day 48 -- Camp

Released: July 25th, 2003

Starring: Anna Kendrick, Don Dixon, Daniel Letterle, Joanna Chilcoat, Robin De Jesus

Writer/Director: Todd Graff

Description: After a series of Broadway flops, songwriter Bert Hanley goes to work at a musical camp for young performers. Inspired by the kids, he finds an opportunity to regain success by staging an altogether new production.

[Review may contain spoilers. Please watch movie before reading, unless you don't care. Most of these films have already been released for a while, so they should be readily available.]

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Before "High School Musical" and "Glee", the quintessential movie and TV show about a group of talented teens was "Fame".  The 1980 film, which later moved to TV and was remade in 2009, is one of those movies every performer watched and then decided that they wanted to do what those kids did. It's to performing arts, what "All the President’s Men" is to journalism.

"Camp" tried to follow in "Fame's" footsteps, but failed miserably. Even the move from a school in NYC to a camp in upstate New York was an ill advised one. There is no real direction in this movie, and it appears to be a collection of scenes with the thinnest of threads connecting them. Only two characters are even remotely developed, straight kid Vlad (Letterle) and cross dressing, gay Michael (De Jesus). From what I can tell, the plot of the movie was the kids inspiring a drunk, failed musical theater producer, who has become all doom and gloom. But when the kids start singing his new songs, he begins to enjoy it again.

Every aspect of the film is under-produced, except for the musical numbers, which were well done. The progression of Vlad from kissing the starlet of the camp to "dating" the unappreciated girl was quick (two scenes), jarring, and frankly, undermined any other relationships in the movie. The only pair that had any chemistry and intrigue was Vlad and Michael. The writer was going for a bond between them where the slowly began to understand each other, but I think they missed an opportunity by not making this duo more of a focus (platonic or romantic).

There appeared to be no over-arcing story between the teens, and the story felt like a bunch of scenes edited together. The action would jump from one story to the next without any transition or build-up. Also, they would bury any conflict in the plot and resurfaces it intermittently, but by that point, all of the drama was gone. The suck up getting revenge on the bossy starlet was a story arc that they completely abandoned and only used in two scenes. This movie was a prime example of really bad editing ruining a film.

The performances weren't all that good. Outside of the signing, which again, was top notch, everything else was pretty poor. The only actor with any semblance of talent was Oscar nominee, Anna Kendrick. Despite her part being small, she still had the most interesting scenes in the film, and as I mentioned before, her storyline should have been expanded. All three leads made it too obvious that they were reading line because most of the "emotional" scenes were very wooden. It felt more like an end of summer camp movie, than a film to be released in theaters.

"Camp" was bad in just about every aspect. The fact that Disney's "Camp Rock" was light years better is kind of sad. The only chance the story had was if it was a TV series, and the writer got a chance to explore all of the storylines that were introduced. It was probably a great learning experience for the actors, but definitely something that shouldn't have been released.

Rating: 3.5/10 -- The singing is the only thing that saves this movie. There's really no reason to watch this movie, unless you were in it.