FAT CAMP: An Uneven Comedy With A Hefty Heart

Summer camp is rife with opportunities for coming-of-age stories. You have a bunch of kids, free from the constraints of school and parents, being supervised by what are essentially just slightly older kids. Needless to say, the opportunities for shenanigans involving sex, drugs, alcohol, and other forbidden fruits are legion. And in the world of film, those shenanigans are frequently accompanied by deep realizations regarding one’s character. If only the real world were so simple!

Fat Camp is a raucous, ribald comedy that takes place over six weeks at a fitness camp designed to whip overweight kids into shape. It includes all the landmarks of your typical summer camp movie, as well as themes of self-confidence and self-acceptance. It’s not the most extraordinary movie to come out this summer, but like the majority of the day camps I attended as a kid, it’s a pleasant enough diversion for a sweltering afternoon.

Welcome to Camp Vision

Hutch (Chris Redd) is four years out of college, where he earned the preferred degree of all people who have no idea what degree to earn, psychology. Needless to say, he hasn’t put his education to use in the slightest. Instead, he spends all of his time either working out or attempting to get laid while still living in his mother’s house. (Said mother is played with sharp, scene-stealing gusto by Vernita Green herself, Vivica A. Fox.) Tired of her son’s mooching, Hutch’s mom issues an ultimatum: either take a job for the summer working at his Uncle Mike’s Camp Vision, or move into a homeless shelter. As Camp Vision will give him a roof over his head for six weeks while he contemplates what on earth to do next, Hutch opts for the latter – but he’s not happy about it.

Hutch moves into a Camp Vision cabin occupied by a collection of misfit boys dealing with issues of self-esteem, sexuality, and excessive stereotyping on top of their weight problems, and their excessively cheerful counselor-in-training, Charlie (Michael Cienfuegos). Hutch proceeds to insult and alienate them all in equal measure, never missing an opportunity to spew his hatred of “fatties”, rip into the boys for their inability to keep up with his obsessive fitness demands, and punctuate every remotely homoerotic sentence with cries of “No homo!”

It doesn’t help that Hutch’s obsessions with fitness and other skin-deep attributes stem from a period of time in his youth when he was a chubby kid at Camp Vision. However, as one could probably guess, eventually Hutch begins to realize that while his body might be perfect, his character could use a lot of work. The presence of a gorgeous and truly caring counselor named Abby (Anabelle Acosta), who is immune to what Hutch thought were his charms, helps speed that process along.

Full of Jokes That Don’t Always Land

Directed by Emmy-nominated documentarian Jennifer Arnold, Fat Camp is a hard-R comedy in the tradition of Wet Hot American Summer, Superbad and, of course, Heavy Weights: all silly sex jokes, rampant profanity and other borderline offensive bits of humor. Kids who have just reached the age in which they can legally watch an R-rated movie without parental supervision will probably love it, but the older you are, the less likely you are to double over in laughter. There are also several awkward moments in which overweight characters are indeed played for laughs – something that is not compatible with the film’s overall message that what is on the inside counts more than one’s physical appearance.

This is epitomized by a subplot involving Charlie’s infatuation with an overweight counselor, Candace (Alyssa LeClair), something that Hutch cannot even begin to fathom. While it was refreshing to see an overweight character with incredible confidence in her sexuality, who hits on Hutch and wears skintight outfits without a care in the world, I didn’t appreciate the way the audience was encouraged to think Charlie’s obsession with Candace was weird.

Despite these issues, the script by Dear White People writer Chuck Hayward, from a story by Hayward and Shane Dawson, isn’t without its share of charming moments, especially as the film progresses and Hutch becomes less of a jerk and more legitimately likable. The same goes for the actor playing him; Redd is guilty of overplaying some of Hutch’s more despicable moments earlier in the movie, but as Hutch becomes a better person, Redd becomes a better actor.

He manages to take a scenery-chewing caricature capable of only speaking at an eardrum-bursting volume and turn him into a well-rounded character with good intentions (not to mention an appropriate indoor voice). Redd is perfectly complemented by the goofy earnestness of Cienfuegos’ performance as Charlie and the four delightfully wacky kids in his cabin; the chemistry of the cast is what keeps Fat Camp’s more juvenile moments from falling completely flat.

Fat Camp: Conclusion

Fat Camp has good intentions, though the film’s execution doesn’t always live up to them. Nonetheless, it’s a pleasant enough escape from the bombast of summer blockbusters currently monopolizing cinemas.

What do you think? Do you like living vicariously through summer camp movies, or do your own memories suffice? Share your thoughts in the comments.  

Fat Camp premiered on BET on July 17, 2017 and is currently available on VOD.