THEATER CAMP (Searchlight/Disney): The odds are that a lot of people who’ll want to see a movie called Theater Camp are comfortable with the kind of ramshackle, hit-or-miss qualities associated with actual summer camp productions, and will likewise find plenty to enjoy in a movie that’s been made with more love and energy than polish. The team of Molly Gordon, Ben Platt, Noah Galvin and Nick Lieberman (all of them wrote and produced, all but Lieberman are in the cast, and Gordon & Lieberman directed) have great affection for the fictional camp in the Adirondacks Mountains that they’ve named Camp AdirondACTS, and if the self-aware corniness of that gag works for you, Theater Camp has lots more. Shot in an on-and-off mockumentary style, the story finds the camp in a state of crisis, with founder Joan (Amy Sedaris) in a coma, and her theater-ignorant, bumbling frat-boy son Troy (Jimmy Tatro) in charge. While Troy tries to tell a Rodgers from a Hammerstein and toys with the idea of selling off the camp, the staff carries on. Although the opening sequences promise that the summer will include multiple productions including Damn Yankees and Cats, the clearance rights were apparently beyond Theater Camp‘s grasp, so the movie focuses almost entirely on the slate’s one original show, a musical bio of Joan herself written by the camp’s stalwart creative team of Amos (Platt) and Rebecca-Diane (Gordon), who have their own stresses to deal with. The daffy staff also includes choreographer Clive (Nathan Lee Graham), stage manager Glenn (Galvin), Joan’s trusted aide Rita (Caroline Aaron) and Janet (Ayo Edebiri, from The Bear), a George Santos-like constant faker. And of course there are the campers, who range familiarly from divas to newbies. Theater Camp has plenty of funny lines, and the occasional tuneful original song. Everyone on screen seems to be having a blast, and that appears to have been the main goal, with little attempt at characterization or more than a skeletal plot. Searchlight reportedly paid $8M for the rights to Theater Camp, in a deal that guarantees a theatrical run, and the challenge will be to draw anyone who didn’t actually attend (and adore) a real-life theater camp to come out to watch the show.
RADICAL: Have you seen the one about the idealistic, eccentric teacher who defies the odds and changes the lives of his seemingly hopeless students? Of course you have, in everything from Dangerous Minds to Dead Poets Society and on and on for decades. But tropes become that way because they work, and in the hands of writer/director Christopher Zalla and star Eugenio Derbez, Radical finds fresh life in an old story. Based on real-life events, it gives us Sergio (Derbez), who arrives as a replacement at one of the lowest-testing elementary schools in Mexico, beset by a tiny budget that’s then looted by corrupt officials, a callous bureaucracy, and a poverty-stricken community under constant threat of drug-related violence. Sergio is determined to shake his sixth-grade class out of their torpor, and he proceeds to discard the aged textbooks and lesson plans, clear away the classroom furniture, and make the kids see the practical value of math, physics and philosophy. Derbez is as irresistibly charismatic as this kind of hero needs to be, and Zalla has given him a delightful partner in the school’s principal Chucho (Daniel Haddad), who starts out resisting the new teacher’s nutty ideas and reluctantly becomes his closest ally. The film also devotes a fair amount of its space to Sergio’s students, and they’re a strong troupe led by Paloma (Jennifer Trejo), a literal budding rocket scientist. Even if you know exactly where Radical is going–and you do–the expertly-staged final sequences, topped by the title cards of the epilogue, serve as a reminder that having the heart warmed can feel pretty damn good.
MUTT: I have to admit that when I read pre-screening interviews about Vuk Lungulov-Klotz’s Mutt, with testimonials about the fact that even among the underrepresentation of trans characters in pop culture, trans men were the most ignored, I feared Sundance at its preachy worst. But Lungulov-Klotz, and Mutt, avoid those obvious potholes. Feña (Lio Mehiel) is a very specific character and not a symbol, and Mutt is simply about one very busy day in his life, focused on his interactions with his younger half-sister (MiMi Ryder), his father (Alejandro Goic) who’s arriving from Chile for a visit, and especially his pre-transition ex (Cole Doman). Naturally Feña’s identity is an important part of these relationships (one can assume the story is personal to the filmmaker, himself a trans man), but he can only spend so much time on such larger issues when he’s also lost his keys and his phone, and he needs to borrow a car to get to the airport and pick up his father. Feña himself is no cardboard hero, but a complicated guy who can be as curt and insensitive as any of the other characters. Everyone in the cast is strikingly effective, especially Mehiel, who has to hold the entire film together, and Mutt has been vibrantly shot on NY locations by Matthew Pothier and engagingly edited (total runtime under 90 minutes) by Adam Dicterow. Mutt, it turned out, is the best kind of Sundance discovery, a tiny film showcasing talent and stories that deserve to be seen by a wider audience.
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