Even though you can't tell by the weather yet, I am on my Summer break from substitute teaching. Monday was my last day until August. This summer besides working a local movie theatre and the Kane Cougars baseball team as a concessionist I will also be volunteering for a month with my family at a camp in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
One of the perks of working at a movie theatre is free movies for me and my family. Last weekend I noticed a new movies coming in called Family Camp and I recognized the people on the poster. At the bottom of the poster it said it was a Skit Guys production.
With the prospect of spending a month volunteering at a camp which hosts family camps and because of my familiarity with the Skit Guys and because of my ability to watch free movies at my theatre I took my daughter to watch Family Camp.
As you can tell by the title of this post, I was not a fan of the movie. I may have walked into the film for free, but I walked out feeling like I had spent too much.
As my daughter pointed out there wasn't much of a Christian message to this film. Yes we laughed at times but there wasn't much to the plot and what there was to the plot was recycled from so many movies before. This was especially disappointing as the Skit Guys skits are original, humorous and imbued with a Christian message.
In 1979 , the summer before I started high school, Bill Murray's first movie Meatballs came out. This was the story of a Summer camp and Murray played the head counselor. In my opinion, it is a very funny movie but a little raunchy. In the Summer of 1986 I worked as a counselor at a Christian Camp. When I applied for the position I wrote about how the movie Meatballs was an inspiration to work at the camp. I referenced the relationship between Murray and Chris Makepeace who played a camper and how Murrays character invested time with Makepeace's character to bring out the best in him.
The fact that there was more of a believable transformative narrative in Meatballs which is basically a PG Animal House in a camp rather than college setting than in a Christian film is deeply disappointing. I think the probability of people like me enjoying Family Camp is cloudy with no chance of Meatballs,
2 comments:
I haven't heard of this one, but I'm familiar with the concept of a movie trope done to death. How sad that they couldn't keep their original creativity in the movie realm. I wonder how much of that divergence in style was forced on them from producers.
Thanks for your input. It did get some positive reviews from Christian outlets and has gotten positive reviews on rotten tomatoes from audience members. I just wasn't feeling it and watching so much of their other stuff it was disappointing to me.
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