REVIEW: ‘Theater Camp’ Is Exactly Why I Love Camp So Much

I love camp so much. Truly, with all of my heart, I owe my life to camp, my closest friends, my career, half my personality, so many of my most formative experiences and relationships, my greatest regrets and heartbreaks, my fondest memories as a kid, and as an adult, and my complete and utter adoration for Molly Gordon, Ben Platt, Nick Lieberman, and Noah Galvin’s Theater Camp. It’s a simple, tried, and true story of a summer camp in upstate New York where campers from all walks of life come together to experience life in a way you only can during a summer away from home, away from parents, and in the throws of lifelong friendships.

The camp’s founder Joan (Amy Sedaris) fell into a coma while fundraising for Camp AdirandACTS and so her son, Troy (Jimmy Tatro) who has never spent a summer there becomes the director at the last minute, much to the chagrin of longtime camp folk Amos (Ben Platt), Rebecca (Molly Gordon) and others.

My history with Theater Camp goes back long before the movie was made, though. I experienced some of my most formative years spending weekends at the real-life camp where Theater Camp was filmed. And while I never had the privilege of spending a summer there, having spent all my summers at a different camp instead, so many people I love did spend their summers at that camp over the many decades it served as the hub for the Reform Jewish teen movement before its abrupt and tragic shuttering in 2019. I still work now for the institution that formerly owned the camp and I separately work as a program director at a summer camp today. So to say that my relationship to this movie was deep before it even began is an understatement.

Separating myself from the heart of the matter, the movie itself is just a great time. I can’t speak for people who don’t have camp in their blood and a deep love for watching children perform in camp musicals, but as the person I am, I found almost every inch of Theater Camp charming and hilarious. The movie is done in a mockumentary style, intercut with text throughout to set the tone for precisely the kind of humor to follow. It’s a tad crude but knowingly so. The creators are all camp people, they know intimately what makes camp powerful and what separates good and bad staff.

So when every single staff member at this camp is atrocious at their jobs, it’s not in the Meatballs or Wet Hot American Summer way of how that was just simply how camp counselors acted at the time. These filmmakers know well that what they’re showing isn’t what they’d hope for. They’re not even spoofing so much as they’re building an intentionally over-the-top atmosphere so that when things get real, you’re wide open to feeling the kind of powerful feelings that camp is famous for.

The movie is really more about Amos and Rebecca’s relationship and Troy’s troubles as the interim camp director than it is about the kids or the shows they’re putting on. Granted, we get to watch practically the whole play at the end, to enormous delight. Plus it includes one of the most iconic drag performances put to screen. But the kids are mostly there to be the butts of countless jokes, which works perfectly well. Even as one of my favorite current child actors Luke Islam gets a substantial role and all the other main child actors are pretty spot-on as kids at a theater camp, playing comic relief is the perfect place for them.

It’s not a kids’ movie, after all. And while I wish some of the other counselors like those played by Owen Thiele and Ayo Edebiri got more screen time, the power of camp still shines the brightest through its adults. Troy starts off annoying, he perfectly embodies the transformation camp has on people. Amos and Rebecca carefully play their characters as aggravating and somewhat stereotypical figures but not too much so that you come to find them annoying. I worried beforehand especially for Platt that he would inject too much of a frenetic energy into his character and thereby the whole movie, just based on the kind of character he can tend to play. Fortunately, I think they both strike the right balance between being a lot and being too much.

Of course, for as much as I can try to separate myself as a person with deep and difficult connections to this movie, acknowledging that the dialogue could be a bit too abrasive sometimes and that the camerawork and editing were a bit too sharp in the edges, I ultimately can’t help but hold all the feelings my past, present, and future hold withing Theater Camp. Just seeing the camp of my teenage years on screen brought me to instant tears, and they sustained quite truly non-stop. They still haven’t stopped as I write now.

But because of how intimately Theater Camp and its creators understand the power and importance of camp, I was able to not only grieve the past but feeling so incredibly inspired to make certain there continues to be a future for the kids I work with to experience camp, to experience transformative experiences and relationships, and be forever changed by what that real-life camp stood for over so many decades. The musical that makes up the final act and the resolution to Troy’s affair as well as Amos and Rebecca’s all hit exactly the right notes to make the finale soar.

Ultimately, Theater Camp is exactly the essence of camp. Even as it goes completely over-the-top and depicts basically nothing akin to what a healthy camp is actually like today, a big part of its genius is how it uses this fact to establish the credibility and excitement requisite for making a big emotional finale land so astoundingly. I can’t say for sure many non-campers or non-theater people will find the same love for this movie. But for all of the people who were transformed by camp in one way or another, I hope you can find the same joys, regrets, and love in Theater Camp as I got to.

Theater Camp is playing in theaters now.