by Adam Grosswirth

When Vlad (Vlad? Really?) arrives at musical-theater-themed Camp Ovation, he causes a stir by being the only new guy in a clique full of outcasts who’ve been coming to camp for many summers to escape their high school freakdom, and by being a (gasp!) a heterosexual.

The movie is kind of tonally all over the place. It was clearly made with a lot of love, and especially affection for “all the misfits and the losers” (to quote an entirely unrelated song by the film’s composer Stephen Trask), but it sometimes veers into Guffman-esque jokiness at the expense of whatever emotional cred it’s trying to build. Would a performing arts camp really do Buried Child or ‘Night, Mother? Would all the boys really be gay? The best jokes are the ones that are believable, like the kids singing “Losing My Mind” on the bus as if it were a camp song, and a great color-blind casting gag with the black kids in Fiddler, followed by a white girl belting the hell out of “And I’m Telling You.”

Things even out about halfway through and it becomes a pretty sweet summer-teen-coming-of-age movie with a pinch of hey-kids-let’s-put-on-a-show.

Summer Timeline: We begin with a montage of our leads attending — or pointedly not attending — their junior proms (with a bizarre musical number that seems to be set at the Survivor Tribal Council), and end at the end of camp.

Enviable Vacation Locale?: It depends on your tolerance for showtunes, but the camp does look lovely (I believe it was shot at Stagedoor Manor, the real-life camp on which Ovation is based).

Coming of Age?: Kind of the whole point, yeah. With songs! Pretty much everyone learns to accept themselves for who they are…though the whole setup of the movie is that these kids all know what they want to be when they grow up and go to a special camp for it, and know they’re gay at 16, so that seems like a short journey. The bitter alcoholic failed composer who’s inexplicably teaching at the camp does have a fabulous “Get a life, people!” speech which includes the eye-opening (and true) line, “Teenage fag-hags turn into adult fag-hags.” And of course he comes of age too. I like how with all this coming of age, there’s no time for the delightfully mean girls to have a change of heart. They’ll be nasty forever, and I think I’ve worked with them. See also…

Quick-Burning Summer Romance?: “A guy like you could have a real lucky summer in a place like this” might be the worst pickup line ever, even for a gawky high-school drama nerd. But it seems to be true. Vlad hooks up with the bitchy blonde Jill, even though he and lead outcast Ellen are clearly going to end up together. Meanwhile, he flirts shamelessly with his roommate Michael, which you think might lead to a gay revelation or at least some bi experimentation, but it doesn’t, much to Michael’s dismay. (It does lead to a weird shot of Vlad’s torso that’s pretty porny for a character who’s supposed to be 16, even if the actor was 24 — yes, I looked it up.)

Michael tries to cure his crush on Vlad (and his homosexuality) by hooking up with Dee. This makes Vlad (who clearly likes the attention) jealous, which makes Dee question his sexuality, which makes him kiss her. Of course! And of course Ellen walks in on them. And oops! He has a girlfriend at home too! But he and Ellen end up together anyway? So, yeah, Vlad’s kind of a dick, which isn’t helped by the fact that Daniel Letterle, while cute, is the least talented of the leads — many of whom have gone on to successful Broadway and film careers, while he doesn’t seem to have worked since 2005.

Best Summer Ever?: Absolutely. What’s drama camp without a little drama?

Unconventional Ways to Beat the Heat: Sondheim.

Summer Fashions: Ellen’s Effie wig is pretty fabulous. They get camp clothes pretty right, which means there’s not much fashion going on.

Worth the A/C?: If you like flawed but sweet indies clearly based on the writer-director’s personal experiences, this is a pretty good one. If you’re a musical-theater nerd, it’s sort a requirement.

As A Summer Movie: It definitely feels like summer, especially if you’ve ever been to camp (even a “normal” one). But nothing explodes (unless you count Anna Kendrick’s amazing performance of “The Ladies Who Lunch”), and all the sex is appropriately chaste or else implied offscreen.

Adam is a former stage manager who now works for a small non-profit that helps theaters connect with each other and produce musicals. Which is both pretty awesome, and pretty gay. In his spare time, he enjoys being cranky. He blogs at judgmentcall.blogspot.com, and tweets @adam807.

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