0/5

Camp: reviews

Camp has just premiered on NBC and attracted mixed US reviews.

2013-07-11_1437Camp has just premiered on NBC.

Produced by Matchbox Pictures and filmed in NSW with Rachel Griffiths, Rodger Corser and 3 Dance Academy grads, it has attracted a mixed bag of reviews, some of which take time to note its brighter spots.

Not many seemed to notice it had been filmed “down under.”

No word on an Australian broadcaster yet.

Variety:
As scripted summer replacements go, the forecast for NBC’s “Camp” would best be described as cloudy, with a chance of “Meatballs.” Filmed in Australia, the summer-camp dramedy is filled with all the requisite clichés, yet the premiere stumbles onto some promising moments in its dual-generation plots involving the kids and camp owner/director, played by “Six Feet Under’s” Rachel Griffiths. The second hour, however, is a tiresome mess, and the characters aren’t consistently strong enough to make this show much more than a summer fling, distinguished more by its financing model than its been-around-the-lake situations.

LA Times:
Every tension is quickly diffused by epiphany; every gray area of human interaction is swiftly dragged out into the sun, pelted with water balloons and revealed to be No Big Deal. All you need is love to solve any problem, which considering the range and level raised in “Camp,” isn’t just ridiculous, it’s insulting. And why bother casting Griffiths, a master of seductive astringency, if you’re just going to turn her into a wide-eyed, speechifying saint? There are moments when “Camp” works — the dialogue can be snappy, the performers are all up to the task — but they are too few and only serve to hint at the show this might have been if the creators and the network had the courage to create something new and different, or at least had another listen to Allan Sherman’s “Camp Granada.”

NY Times:
Given how indelible many people’s memories of childhood camp can be, it’s surprising that so little about that universal rite of passage has shown up on television. “Camp,” a new NBC series starting on Wednesday, tries to correct that oversight. The fictional Little Otter Family Camp is a typical, all-American lakeside camp, with hazing, brutal capture-the-flag competitions and young, sex-obsessed counselors, but also a humane guiding ethos. And while it could be awful, this series has charm woven into predictable story lines. It’s not a National Lampoon-style spoof, but it is too lighthearted to be a drama. In spirit “Camp” (not to be confused with a similarly named reality show on the USA channel) may be closest to shows like “Brothers & Sisters” and “Parenthood,” but because this is, after all, summer camp, this show is sillier.

Newsday:
The show starts so-so, with a kid-delivered punch in the privates, mean girls, the snooty rival camp across the lake, too fasttalking and too much sex talk/activity. But just when you’re about to give up, “Camp” — like its namesake summer experience — becomes cool. It turns into a character story, revealed through the camp’s interpersonal dynamics. There’s the adult tale of Griffiths finding her way through her blown-up life, which somehow works even at its most cliched. There’s the outcast CIT triumvirate of secret-bearing newbie Kip (Thom Green), owner’s son Buzz (Charles Grounds) and camp-averse clever chick Marina (Lily Sullivan).

Salon:
The only cliché “Camp” avoids is the one where the camp it focuses on resembles in any way a real, functional summer camp. “Little Otter” is ostensibly a family camp— there are some parents there with their children, though they are mostly getting drunk – but there are also dozens and dozens of kids running around, seemingly parentless. There are a whole host of teenage counselors-in-training who sometimes have kids to look after, but mostly not. There is a clique of teenage girls who are neither counselors-in-training nor with their parents, but who are just roaming around being mean girls. A counselor can just leave in the middle of the day to, say, go get his gambling-addicted mom from a nearby casino. The days have no structure. Little Otter seems like a great place to go with your kid if you never, ever want there to be a lifeguard on duty when they go swimming, which they appear to be able to do whenever they want.

AV Club:
Though much of this review is harsh, Camp is not a wholly awful show, just one that potentially got lost along the way. You can tell it means well and has heart under its awkward surface, and it has a pleasant low-stakes quality that’s appealing in the summer months, like relaxing into a beach chair on a sunny day. But in this modern summer landscape where high concept series like Under The Dome make a big noise, a soft, sweet, low-concept show like Camp has a mighty struggle ahead of it, especially when the drama is so low-stakes and bland it’s hard to muster up a reason to come back to see if the show manages to right itself. But if you’re looking for low-stakes, blandly awkward, and yet somehow still intermittently pleasant summer programming, Camp is about as low stakes as it gets.

6 Responses

  1. Seven is reported (by The Australian) to have keep the rights to Camp when they negotiated their way out of their NBC Universal output deal.

  2. I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for this to turn up on Australian TV. It’s a dreary mess and the axe will probably fall in weeks, not months.

  3. I liked it, too bad there is no AU broadcaster yet, given the current state of things on NBC. Rachel and most of the rest of the cast were great.

    As for being filmed here, well there was only one scene where I felt that. Hope NBC doesn’t rush to pull the plug on this one.

  4. Well, what the critics think isn’t important, is what the viewers think and how it rates that matter. I never take notice of what critics think, I prefer to judge for myself. Especially since critics seem to always hate shows that I love. Hopefully it will be on 7 here, since it is on NBC, most of their shows seem to be on 7.

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