Theater Camp (Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman, 2023) (Patreon)

Back in the days of the Movie Nerd Discussion Group, someone introduced the initialism YMMV. This of course means "your mileage may vary," taking the car commercial disclaimer and applying it to movies whose pleasures are highly subjective.. I thought about this when I read negative reviews of Theater Camp after I saw it, and mostly laughed my way through it. Best as I can figure, here's the deal. If you like Christopher Guest's satirical mockumentaries, there's a good chance you'll find Theater Camp toothless and ingratiating, a sort of fan service to the real-life drama kids the film depicts.

But I really don't like Guest's films. I find them not only unfunny but mean-spirited. They have their bright spots, of course, and those usually had to do with Fred Willard. But to me, stuff like Guffman, Best in Show, and A Mighty Wind were all about identifying niche interests and obsessive hobbyists and showing them up as idiots. By contrast, one might find Theater Camp besotted with its misguided characters, the material a bit too close to the makers involved. But this actually gives you an insider's perspective regarding the preening narcissism of show-people, reminding us that these traits were often formed in response to being queer outcasts.

Ben Platt is in his element here, not forced to struggle to seem like a normal human being as he was in Dear Evan Hansen. And Molly Gordon, who I'd previously known only from The Bear, provides the film with a welcome tinge of bittersweetness. Her life has stalled out, not for the professional reasons she thinks it has, but because she has finally run up against the limits of her existence as a queer-identified heterosexual woman. The plot itself, about the possible closure of the camp, is pointless. Rather, Theater Camp is a container for detailed character work, based on the premise that no one -- not even would-be Jake Paul dudebros -- has an easy time of it. In other words, identity is performance, and the luckiest among us derive joy from doing that work in public.