SUMMERHOOD (Jacob Medjuck). 96 minutes. Opens Friday (November 5). For venues, trailers and times, see Movies. Rating: N
I loved summer camp – still dream about it every June – so I was primed for this coming-of-age comic reverie set in a kids’ summer haven. But this is writer/director Jacob Medjuck’s first film, and you can really tell.
The dialogue all sounds stilted, the director seems to know nothing about emotional conflict and he counts on all the gross-out, poopy jokes to carry the entire project.
The movie, narrated by John Cusack and filmed near Lunenburg, NS, follows four 10-year-old cabin-mates – Reckless (Degrassi: The Next Generation’s Scott Beaudin), Toast and Fetus – all of them bad boys who get on the assistant director’s (Christopher McDonald) nerves. Oh, and Fetus (Lucian Maisel) has a big crush and leans on his counsellor Careless (Medjuck) to guide him. That’s really all you need to know.
Maisel is awfully cute, but he doesn’t enunciate, so you often can’t understand what he’s saying. Cusack’s voice-over is way too blabby and distracting. And typical of Medjuck’s weakness, one beautifully written speech from the assistant director – about how he’s the only one at camp who cares about the kids’ safety – totally tanks. That’s because the character’s been so relentlessly ridiculed throughout the film that we can’t take him seriously.
Strictly for eight-year-olds.
