THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, August 30, 1994 TAG: 9408300039
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E9 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie Review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 64 lines
IF IT WASN'T for the mindless slapstick and persistent adult-bashing, you could dismiss ``Camp Nowhere'' as just another low-budget quickie designed to appeal to the wish fulfillment of pre-teens. As it is, there is every indication that preteens are much too smart to go along with this silliness.
Wish fulfillment, though, is much in evidence here. A group of kids hate the idea that their parents are, once again, shipping them off to regulated and ``educational'' camps for the summer. There are four sets of offensive sites: computer camp, dieting camp, the camp for macho military training and the camp for training future theater stars. The kids reject all four of these projects and, instead, hire an out-of-work theater teacher, played by Christopher Lloyd, to impersonate four different camp directors.
The idea, so lame it needs crutches, is that Lloyd will be so convincing that he will get the tuition money from each of the parents. The kids will then set up their own camp. No regulations. No adults. No worries. All cool.
Of course, all goes as planned. This scheme, if nothing else, gives Lloyd a chance to play four different roles in the film's first 30 minutes. (He's the rubber-faced mugger who was Doc in the ``Back to the Future'' films, Uncle Fester in ``The Addams Family'' and the villain in ``Who Framed Roger Rabbit.'' A riper ham actor couldn't be found this side of a delicatessen.)
The kids rent Camp Nowhere from 85-year-old Burgess Meredith (the manager in ``Rocky'') and promptly buy a big-screen TV and other gadgets to amuse themselves. Money-mad selfishness seems to be their thing. There is never any complaint about cooking or other chores. (You'd have thought some of them might have missed having adults to wait on them.) We are asked to believe that this is a preteen kind of Woodstock-hippie haven. There is only one mild complaint - that the camp can't get cable on the TV.
Things reach a finale when the parents come to call and the kids try to make the camp look like four camps at once - frantically switching from military to computer to fitness to theatrical settings. The funniest moment is a teen version of Tennessee Williams' ``A Streetcar Named Desire.''
The kids are of such varying ages that there is even more wonder how they'd get along for an entire summer. (Several of the girls look like they might be college students, even if they do read lines as if they were dropouts.) Jonathan Jackson (Luke and Laura's son on TV's ``General Hospital'') is so smug about being a brain that you wish he'd succumb to being a child once in a while. Peter Scolari of TV's ``Newhart'' is a nerdy parent. M. Emmet Walsh (appearing in his 73rd film) is a bumbling bill collector who pursues Lloyd.
Sitting through this 90-minute film may well age its targeted audience through puberty. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
MOVIE REVIEW
``Camp Nowhere''
Cast: Christopher Lloyd, M. Emmet Walsh, Jonathan Jackson, Tom
Wilson
Screenplay: Andrew Kurtzman and Eliot Wald
MPAA rating: PG (mild language, often tasteless)
Mal's rating: 1/2 star
Locations: Cinemark Movies 10, Greenbrier, Chesapeake; Circle 6,
Norfolk; Lynnhaven Mall, Virginia Beach.
by CNB