Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, August 27, 1994 TAG: 9409010045
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By MIKE MAYO CORRESPONDENT
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The young ensemble cast is competent enough, though they don't have a lot to work with. Their elders fare better because they don't have to carry as much of the slow action and because they've got the best lines.
Mud (Jonathan Jackson), Zack (Andrew Keegan), Trish (Marne Patterson) and Gaby (Melody Kay) are middle-school friends who face summer camps that they dread. Mud's dad (Peter Scolari) wants to ship him off to a camp for computer nerds; Zach faces a military camp; for Trish it's drama; for Gaby, weight-loss.
They enlist-blackmail Van Welker (Christopher Lloyd), an out-of-work drama teacher, to impersonate various camp pitchmen to their parents and sell them on fictitious places. Then they take the money their parents have paid him to rent a run-down resort (from Burgess Meredith in a nice cameo).
A few dozen of their pals horn into the act and they all wind up spending the summer without adult supervision. They can watch "Beverly Hills 90210" and "Beavis and Butthead" to their hearts' content and eat Pop Tarts and Slim Jims for breakfast.
This is a Disney production, so you know that nothing very bad is going to happen, and in the end, the kids are going to learn a valuable lesson, etc. etc. In that regard, the script by Andrew Kurtzman and Eliot Wald follows the formula religiously. At the same time, they try to deal fairly honestly with characters at a complex age.
Director Jonathan Prince doesn't generate much energy until the last third of the film. Before then, Lloyd provides the sparks. He gets some help from Wendy Makkena as a doctor and M. Emmet Walsh as a repo man. Overall, "Camp Nowhere" is just too thin and slow for most audiences, young or old.
Camp Nowhere **
A Hollywood Pictures release playing at the Salem Valley 8. 94 min. Rated PG for some mild cussing.
by CNB