Mercifully sold to Searchlight following its Sundance premiere, therefore guaranteeing a theatrical release, Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman’s confidently directed Theater Camp is the kind of movie that demands to be seen alongside fellow audience members.  The film is a love letter to outcasts, to all the square pegs who don’t quite know how to fit in.  Directly descended from Christopher Guest mockumentaries, but less dry and told with more exuberance, the movie both gently pokes fun at and embraces theater and camp life.  This is a consistently funny, sharply written comedy that manages to be a feel-good without pandering to its audience.

The film centers around the AdirondACTS summer theater camp in upstate New York, a breeding ground and safe haven for aspiring thespians.  When the camp’s founder Joan (Amy Sedaris) suffers a medical malady during a performance of “Bye Bye Birdie” gone hilariously awry, the task falls to her son Troy (Jimmy Tatro) to keep the camp running and stave off impending foreclosure.  Helping him are Amos (Ben Platt), head of drama; Rebecca-Diane (Molly Gordon); Glenn (Noah Galvin), the stage manager; and various eccentric teachers, including new hire Janet (Ayo Edebiri), who may or may not have fudged part of her resume.  The movie’s ‘plot’ focuses on their efforts to stage a fundraiser, a play dedicated to the camp’s founder, pretentiously titled “Joan, Still.”

The laughs start almost immediately with Joan’s mishap, proceeding through all of the zany cast’s introductions and then their collective attempt to save the camp.  I kept waiting for the script to run out of steam, for the jokes to get old, and they never do, which is all the more impressive given that this was expanded from a 2020 short film.  The pacing never flags, with each scene lasting just long enough for the rapid-fire jokes to land before moving on to the next character moment or set-piece. 

Each of the characters has a distinct personality and motivation, and is perfectly cast.  Troy is a dude-bro who constantly livestreams and prefers Post Malone to Sondheim, clearly way in over his head; Tatro here continues to perfect the well-meaning d-bag type he first played in American Vandal. In one hilarious early segment, he bemoans, “theater gave my mom a coma.” It’s amusing, and heart-warming, to see him working to understand these theater kids and to speak their language.

The rest of the cast is similarly goofy without devolving into caricature. Amos and Rebecca-Diane, who are tasked with staging the fundraiser. They both take themselves way too seriously, and the directors wring consistent laughs from their banter and friction.  In an amusing recurring bit (which also applies to the other teachers), they evaluate the kids as if they’re holding auditions for an actual Broadway play.  “This will fully destroy you,” they tell the cast at the start of rehearsal. At one point, they hilariously debate whether one of the young girls is believable as a French prostitute.  The best gags are the ones that gently make fun of the characters but are also subtly revealing.  For instance, Janet is clearly in over her head, and many of the ridiculous situations she finds herself in are because she has no idea what she’s doing.  When she teaches the kids stage combat, she literally just teaches them to hit each other. And so on.

The movie smartly does not look down on any of its characters.  Any teasing is done with a loving grin and an embrace of the characters.  Indeed, there’s a palpably sweet undercurrent running throughout the film.  At various points, we see actual home movies and photographs from the actors’ pasts, which is sure to elicit ‘awws’ from the audience.   This melding of actor and character makes you believe (or want to believe, rather) that this is a passion project, borne out of a genuine love for its material.  At the post-premiere Q and A, the writers (in addition to the 2 directors, Ben Platt and Noah Galvin are credited as screenwriters) emphasized their love of theater and their personal memories of camp.  For instance, a giggle-inducing recurring bit in which the different teachers read bedtime stories to the kids in their bunks was pulled directly from Platt’s summers at camp. Smartly though, the directors employ enough restraint to keep these heartfelt touches from becoming too saccharine.

This is a very easy movie to recommend, and manages to have something for everyone, without diluting its wit.  For anyone who misses Guest’s mockumentaries, this film is the closest thing I’ve seen to an heir apparent.  There’s also a never-ending string of inside jokes and Broadway jargon for the theater lovers in the audience.  And the melding of zaniness and heart is impressively well-done.  In particular, the relationship between Amos and Rebecca-Diane begins to acquire something resembling pathos by the film’s end.  To cap it all off, the fundraiser in the film’s finale is absolutely worth the wait.  It’s too funny to spoil any of the jokes, but suffice it to say, it perfectly straddles the line between touchingly sincere and gleefully offensive, much like the movie itself.