Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman’s “Theater Camp” world premiered this past January at Sundance, where it received two standing ovations from an overjoyed audience at the Eccles theatre. Shortly afterwards, Searchlight Pictures took the buzzy bait and acquired the film for $8 million. This mockumentary set at musical theater camp might adhere to hardcore camp musical aficionados, but, truthfully, that’s about it. Amos (Ben Platt) and Rebecca-Diane (Molly Gordon) are lifelong best friends who happen to also be drama instructors at an upstate New York camp for theatre nerds. Bad news arrives when the camp director bows out due a health scare, and her son, clueless tech-bro Troy (scene-stealing Jimmy Tatro), with no camp or theater experience, comes to run the property … down the ground. There are some funny gags here and there, but this 94-minute joke-per-second farce is uneven, unfocused and too long. What does work are the songs, written by Gordon, Platt, and Mark Sonnenblick. They have a tongue-in-cheek nature to them and it’s great seeing kids actually utter these zany adult-oriented lyrics. However, story-wise, everybody tries too hard to get a laugh. Christopher Guest, this is not. [C]
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