Wonderfully offbeat film!

A Masterpiece!

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The joyful confection is coated in a sparkly gloss, bright enough to gleam from the darkest, most cynical corners.

On the one hand, it is a pity that this movie has the make-up of a teen movie. Because it is at times, cleverly written, and well acted, with un-mainstream kind of takes. And the teen-flic make-up sets it up for thrashing by the peeps who don't take the time to watch this one a tat more closely. But F- them. This one should have had the following of a Rushmore Academy. One of the nice things about it, is that whenever it threatens to become a cliché, i.e. whenever one of the characters uses one of those cliché lines, it is immediately followed by an cliché exposing line! This is kinda refreshing. For example Swain says something that would be sold to us as a "Deep-And-Meaningful-Possibly-Oscar-Winning-Moment"- in ANY other teen-flic, and follows that up with a heartfelt 'I can't believe I just said that!' I apologize for not giving a better example of this. I'd have to watch it again to do so.More interestingly, I think it is the first time that I saw a 12 year old gay character in an American movie? Okay, so it wasn't explored very much, and was made explicit only at the end, but give the man credit for bringing it up in the first place. I'm sure the actor was 16, okay maybe 14, but he looked 12 at least. And the whole lesbian thing, it was nice to look at but not exploitive and left pleasantly unsolved. As were the romance(s). No clear-cut happy-ever-afters for these guys. It's like Coupling in that it tries to make interesting observations about the bizarre nature of female and male behaviour, in groups and opposite each other. And the seven voice-overs, yeah, maybe a bit annoying and the Indie-Powers-That-Be have declared that it is Foul and Trite to use voice-over, (but not Oscar nominated Danish top director Lars von Trier [ uk.imdb.com/name/nm0001885/ ] for example), BUT it is new, and it really tries to paint the story from different angles. Not Rashomon by a long shot of course, but still, it's way better than genre flics like 'She's all that' and '10 things I hate about you.'Actually, there's no comparison, the only thing they have in common with _Happy Campers_ is that the character are young teens. Period. Ultimately, this is about loss and coming of age, and the fact that some of us do have a great time at camp. And some us ... don't, not at all, no way José.There are some profound lines and insights. And also some nice quotes: On the first menstruation of a girl: "That was not a period, but an exclamation mark!" ...... New to me, anyways.

"Happy Campers" is a useful movie only because it prompts basic questions about its writer/director Daniel Waters and his breakout film "Heathers" (which he wrote but did not direct). Did he use up all his good stuff writing the Heathers screenplay and have nothing left for "Happy Campers? Did he lose most of his active brain cells shortly after making Heathers (an event that would account for both the 'Hudson Hawk"and the "Happy Campers" screenplays)? Was Heathers just a happy accident? Or is Heathers so open-ended that critics and viewers attributed significance to a very ordinary movie. All these explanations are possible either jointly or collectively.For "Happy Campers" Waters tries to weave "Breakfast Club" themes into a "Meatballs" story. So you get tedious voice-over suggestions about how the artificial bounds of the high school hierarchy can sometimes be bridged by spending a couple months together as summer camp counselors. Like each detention server in "The Breakfast Club", each counselor is an easily identified stereotype. And over the course of camp each is supposed to go through changes, at least that appears to be the premise.Unfortunately the script has difficulty communicating this process despite an unprecedented amount of voice-over narration. All seven of the main characters get some voice-over time, a device that is very confusing and pretty much destroys any possibility of the movie having any unified theme.Dominique Swain has the biggest part as Wendy, the terminally peppy cheerleader type (appropriately pictured in a cheerleader outfit on the DVD). Swain is the only good thing about the movie, it is an over-the-top caricature that plays to her acting strengths. This is the type of role Swain should be playing, one that requires self-parody rather than subtlety. She also benefits by relative comparsion to James (Jaime) King-whose acting skills are in the Kathy Ireland mold, as well as from being paired with the physically miscast Brad Renfro-who manages to drain all energy from each scene in which he appears. The other four counselors have a fair about of screen time and some lame misadventures but nothing particularly memorable.Some effort is made to introduce the actual summer campers to the story but none of it even remotely works. "Meatballs" was able to get away with shallow character development because it was basically just a Bill Murray vehicle. Although Swain might have been able to carry the whole thing like Murray the script does not allow this and things never really get going in "Happy Campers".Waters apparently believed that audiences would react positively to a movie where 90% of the comedy involved sexual references that most preteens would consider moronic. Hey Daniel, did you pay someone to write that Heathers" screenplay for you.

i gotta say i love this movie, and im normally a battle royale/audition kinda guy. the characterisation is excellent, and you really get a sense of involvement in the 'plot?' and how sexy does jamie king look in the lake, hychee-waa-waa. mellow, feel good, over and under-sexed fun. force yourself to rent it at least (try telling yourself its only for the lake scene)

I was mildly looking forward to seeing this movie because i think Brad Renfro is great,but i was sadly disapointed with it. It had a couple of funny moments but that was it. It ended up getting very black and i think it would of worked much better if it had taken a lighter approach. Also there were unneccessary 'Lesbian' scenes, which looked like they were put there to fill plot holes, it didn't work