This time, I watched this with outlining in mind. And it wasn’t as useful as Camp Rock was, but it reinforced how unusual this movie is. Camp Rock resulted in about 40-50 specific beats or developments. This reached about 30. It’s mostly a plotless movie, but there are a few small threads of plot scattered throughout. The plot breaks down to two points.
1. Bill Murray befriends and encourages a young, lonely camper.
2. Bill Murray develops his relationship with a counselor, Roxanne.
The second of those plots may not qualify, since it’s hard to say that much development happens. She eventually relents to his charms, and at the end, he’s interested in her moving in with him. But we don’t see much happen between them. I realized that part of the problem is that we never get a sense of her personality.
I have a feeling that about 75% of this movie was improvised. There are scenes that are just gags, and they pad out the running time. There were several instances where I wasn’t sure if something should count as a scene, since it had no bearing on anything else.
Even through this lack of plot, this slice-of-life approach works very well. It reminds me of memories of summer camp, where there was no real narrative, just a string of unrelated events. Although, to be honest, now it makes me aware of how few of the good times I can remember.
Specifically, I was watching this because I was looking for the Snobs v Slobs showdown at the end. This has it, but it doesn’t seem to be as cliche as I remember. I know Poison Ivy has a variation on it, but that won’t count. I don’t feel like watching Heavyweights again, even though that meets my criteria. We’ll see how this goes.
No comments:
Post a Comment