Summercamp!
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BY L. KENT WOLGAMOTT / GZO
Take away their computers, video games and, most importantly, their cell phones, and today’s kids are not a lot different than generations of kids that have come before them.
That’s one of the main impressions that is left after watching “Summercamp!,” an endearing documentary about one three-week session at a Wisconsin camp for kids 9 to 15.
Directors Bradley Beesley (who made the excellent Flaming Lips documentary “The Fearless Freaks”) and Sarah Price took their cameras to the Swift Nature Camp and simply followed the kids and counselors. So the picture meanders, just like a camp experience.
3 out of 4 stars
Director: Bradley Beesley and Sarah Price
Rated: Not rated
Running Time: 1 hour, 25 minutes
Now Showing: Ross
The Reel Story: This sweet, nostalgic documentary follows a group of kids during three weeks at a Wisconsin camp.
It starts when the kids board the bus to go to camp and ends on the ride home. In between, there are games and crying, campfires and confidences shared, pre-teen romance and counselor burnout and a fishhook in the eye and, of course, wedgies.
While there’s no effort at biography or backstory (we don’t meet moms and dads or go back to the towns with the kids), some of the campers become characters in mini-dramas.
They include Cameron, a chubby older bully who is in a cabin with younger boys and often cries because he misses his mom, and sad little Holly, who wanders around the campground looking for chickadees and talking to her toys. Holly has a moving story about her chickadee obsession, but I’m not going to tell it here.
Beesley and Price don’t overly narrow the scope of the film, however. Kids pop up here and there, seen only briefly but still making an impression. Activities from holistic clowning (I didn’t make that up) to swimming take place. But the kids seem more engaged in building sand castles and just goofing off.
Some of the charm of “Summercamp!” is unquestionably nostalgic. From the looks of things, summer camp hasn’t changed much over the decades. So watching it you can’t help but flash back to your own experiences, learning to canoe or quarreling with a cabinmate you didn’t like.
But because it was filmed in the past couple of years, “Summercamp!” is also a look at kids today, removed from their electronics-saturated environments, given a little independence and allowed to be kids again. That makes it both insightful and refreshing.
Reach L. Kent Wolgamott at 473-7244 or kwolgamott@journalstar.com.
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