Theater Camp (Film) Review

In the musical mockumentary Theater Camp, Molly Gordon, Ben Platt, and all their friends come together to create a love letter to the place that brought them together. They also proceed to roast it the only way only former catty Broadway hopefuls can, with aplomb and plenty of memorable tunes.

Joan, founder of the titular camp Adirond Acts, has built a haven for wildly talented outcasts to belt up to the spotlight while getting hard-truthed into being the best “artistes” they can be. The camp also happens to be just four hours from New York. However, it’s held together mostly by the boundless passion of the staff and the lessening generosity of the campers’ parents.

When Joan suffers from a seizure during a show that lands her in a coma, it falls to her adult-ish son Troy (played by the delightfully gormless Jimmy Tatro) to keep the place afloat this summer. This is a slight problem when Troy cares more about building his entrepreneurial (sorry, “entroypreneurial”) brand than upholding the legacy his mother has laid out for this and previous generations of theatre kids.

Previous generations include a good chunk of the staff, including co-director Molly Gordon (Shiva Baby, Booksmart) who plays the camp’s music teacher Rebecca-Dianne, and Ben Platt (Dear Evan Hansen, Pitch Perfect) who stars as their deeply self-serious acting teacher Amos. They happen to be a dynamic duo that can silence a room full of tweens with an unfinished musical phrase. Maybe out in the real world they’re struggling to find actual performing gigs and reminding themselves to pay mom rent, but here they’re practically gods.

They are the stuff of legends to this next gen of bright-eyed Streisands and Sondheims. It doesn’t help that they don’t take kindly to Troy, someone who (unlike them) has never needed such a special place to feel like he belongs. They like him even less as he flounders under the staggering amount of debt the camp has accrued. The more they (and the rest of the campers) alienate him, the more tempting selling out with rival camp Lakeside to avoid foreclosure starts to look.

The plot itself is thin but much like any great musical, the devil is in the details. Theater Camp bursts at the seams with so much great material you barely have time to laugh at one before another comes to muscle its way onstage. A lot of this seems down to the largely improvised dialogue allowing for a tumbling flow of dynamics that enhance both the juvenile frenzy of a performing camp and the incredible chemistry of the entire cast.

Other standout cast members include Noah Galvin (Booksmart) as the insanely talented stage tech Glenn. There is also the eminently watchable it girl Ayo Edebiri (The Bear, Bottoms) as Janet whom Troy hires to replace all the staffers he had to let go for budget cuts, and Patti Harrison (Shrill, I Think You Should Leave) as financial consultant Caroline. In particular, Caroline is Troy’s devil on the shoulder and subsequent love interest, egging him on with pandering compliments that toe the line between deceptive and sincere.

Let’s not overlook the incredible cast of kids who (by design in many cases) are total scene-stealers. Particularly notable is Vivienne Sachs’s stage tech junior Lainy’s deadpan delivery of “okay but… I’m craving a performance” in lieu of a bedtime story, or one of the young actresses being tricked into waitressing in one of Troy’s money-making schemes asking a diner casually “Can I offer you a roll? Or the chilling tale of how I lost my daughter?” because she is not going to pass up the opportunity to character build in her first turn at immersive theatre!

The film fulfills this lovely meta-narrative holistically honoring Joan’s starting monologue about how these kids need a place like Adirond Acts like Theater Camp itself. Not because they don’t belong anywhere else, but because it would frankly be a crime for them to miss out on their dreams when they are so good at what they do.

I worry in all my effusive praise that this mischaracterizes the film as a heartfelt comedy of errors. However, with all the cutting barbs and self-awareness it dishes out at every opportunity there is still an undeniable warmth underlying the sharpness. It honestly reminds me of my own experiences as a theatre kid from Stage Coach to film school. It captures the double-edged sword of chasing a dream only a fraction of people make true but loving every second of the struggle because there’s nothing else you’d rather do.

It details the suffering and love that live alongside each other in theatre, entertainment, and art. I think Theater Camp gets that wholeheartedly without ever missing a self-reflexive note of reality. Theater Camp is available for streaming in the US on Hulu and in the UK in cinemas. It will be released to Disney+ in the future as well.