Camp Nowhere

Sometimes, a film's misbegotten marketing campaign is more interesting than the movie itself. Take Camp Nowhere, for instance. This newest tribute to conspicuous consumption by bratty kids is obviously designed to suck in the available loose change of young teenagers with too much time to fill during summer vacation. So the geniuses at Disney unload this sappy sucker just as school starts. No wonder the theater was deserted at the showing I attended. The movie's audience had to be in bed by nine.

Camp Nowhere isn't the worst example of this basically loathsome genre. Compared to such earlier Disney efforts as Blank Check, this movie seems like a comedic masterpiece. It has a few passable jokes, one good laugh and the good sense to keep Christopher Lloyd's mugging to a minimum.

Jonathan Jackson (Free Willy) plays a nice boy with an obnoxious plan to avoid being sent for the summer to Camp Microchipawa. He and his co-conspirators create a fictitious camp that allegedly offers everything from musical theater to war games. Lloyd plays an ex-drama teacher who was fired for trying to stage a musical version of Silence of the Lambs (that's one of the passable jokes), so he's the perfect idiot to con the stupid adults into falling for their children's absurd plan.

The one unusual aspect of Camp Nowhere, is its peculiar redefining of the "family values" agenda. During their summer together, Lloyd takes the kids back to such old-fashioned basics as skinny dipping, Jimi Hendrix and (though only vaguely suggested, of course) the free love movement. Gripes! Disney's trying to cash in on Woodstock, too. I expect the next animated feature from the Magic Kingdom to be called Easy Mouser.