SUMMER CAMP Didn't Go Old Enough
And other mistakes that kept the Diane Keaton starrer from being a Book Club-esque hit
(Written by B.O. Boy Pat)
(Seen above: Stars Dennis Haysbert, Kathy Bates, Diane Keaton, and Eugene Levy watch the opening weekend numbers come in for Summer Camp.)
Lost in the box office hysteria around the tank job of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga was the opening weekend bombing of another movie which tried to capitalize on the audience goodwill for a better, though ultimately disconnected film. Summer Camp— the latest Diane Keaton “It’s not a Book Club movie but maybe audiences will think it’s Book Club?” movie— cratered this weekend in 10th place with a 3-day haul of only $1 million. That’s far off from the $13 mil that Book Club opened to in May of 2018, on its way to a $68 mil domestic purse. While that Keaton-Fonda (Jane, not Henry) flick kicked off what Hollywood hoped would be a Golden Era of Golden Girls-style films, the “Women Of a Certain Age” comedies have been on a steady decline since. Keaton films such as POMS ($13 mil total), Mack and Rita ($2.5 mil total) and Maybe I Do ($1.3 mil) have been buried, while other movies of the genre such as 2023’s 80 For Brady ($39 mil total) and Book Club: The Next Chapter ($17 mil domestic cume) are at best residing in a mauseleum. With those numbers, this genre is officially closer to hospice care than their headlining stars. But there were measures that could have been taken to prolong the box office life of Summer Camp, had the producers chosen painful longetvity over letting the film pass away in comfort.
Here’s three ways that Summer Camp could have lived to see one more B.O. birthday:
American Pie presents: Summer Camp. This film co-stars Eugene Levy as the romantic interest, basically casting him in the role previously played by Andy Garcia and Tom Brady in these films. While landing the Schitt’s Creek star seems like a coup, the problem was that Levy (based on the trailers, which is all this writer can go by) is playing a suave lothario in the Don Juan/Don Jon mold, which is not how big screen audiences are conditioned to the Second City alum. Moviegoers want to see Levy put on the iconic glasses and striped-white shirt one last time and give us another ride as the bumbling Jim’s Dad of the American Pie saga. As the only actor to appear in EVERY American Pie film— from the main universe through the American Pie presents series such as The Naked Mile, The Book of Love, and of course Band Camp— Levy has become indentified as Jim’s Dad in the way that Sly Stallone has with Rocky Balboa or Charlie Chaplin as The Little Tramp. While the American Pie franchise has lost steam from its early 2000s box office heyday, 2012’s American Reunion still scored $58 mil domestic which is higher than all but the original Book Club. So if the producers of Summer Camp had only struck a deal to retrofit this Keaton comedy as an installment in the Pie-iverse, they could have easily added millions to the opening weekend kitty. Simply massage the script so that Jim’s Dad (now a widower on the prowl in Pie canon) is shipped to a Summer Camp to find love, and he accidentally fornicates with a bowl of cafeteria soup or a racoon before marrying his fellow camper Keaton. American Pie presents: Summer Camp may not have done Book Club 1 or American Pie 2 numbers, but it would have kept the film from running a naked mile at the box office.
Go older. Much older. As of today’s date, the Guiness Book of World Records recognizes Maria Branyas Morera, born in 1907, as the oldest woman alive.
This supercentanarian, seen celebrating her 117th birthday, currently resides in a nursing home in Catalonia, Spain and has no known acting experience or ambitions. That should not have stopped producers from casting Ms. Morera as the co-lead in Summer Camp. More than ever movies need an element that makes them seem special and big screen worthy to potential audiences. Why go to the theater when I can watch the latest documentary series slop on Netflix? This is especially true for the “Women of a Certain Age” genre. And there’s no better way to save a genre that’s on life support than by giving audiences a fresh new star who’s herself on life support. While Kathy Bates and Alfre Woodard are Acamdemy Award winning and nominated actresses with unmatched resumes in the film business, neither of them are considered the type of special attractions that mobilize audiences. They’re not the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park or the Freddy of Five Nights at Freddy’s. But had Roadside Attractions put together enough cash to woo the 117 year-old Morera— who until about 15 years ago was still performing light exercises— to fly to set and star in her first movie, they absolutely could have had a Freddy Fazebear level attraction for Summer Camp. The buzz around Summer Camp’s first trailer promoting Academy Award winner Diane Keaton starring opposite “The World’s Oldest Living Woman” Maria Branyays Morera would have potentially been at Deadpool and Wolverine levels, especially with scenes of Morera navigating a canoe and becoming involved in a love triange with Dennis Haysbert and Jim’s Dad. While some might see it as an issue that Ms. Morera now exclusively uses a voice-to-text program to communicate due to hearing loss, that easily could be worked into the comedy of the film, in which Morera’s character’s voice-to-text program leads to Jim’s Dad’s latest accidental sexual mishap. Having survived her brutal bout with COVID-19 in March 2020, Maria Branyas Morera was ready to thrive on set, on the red carpet, and opposite Sean eating the Hot Wings to promote her film debut in Summer Camp. And even had the production led to her death, Summer Camp could easily have been her posthumous The Dark Knight. It was a move that the producers needed to make.
Summer Space Camp. In the year 2000, Clint Eastwood’s “Four Astronauts of a Certain Age” pic Space Cowboys made over $90 mil at the domestic box office. Why didn’t Roadside Attractions take a cue from Clint and send their elderly cast into space? There was simply no reason why the summer shenanigans needed to be Earthbound. Instead of walking by a lake, you have Diane Keaton and Jim’s Dad stranded outside of their space station, unable to make contact with NASA or their grandchildren. The only astronaut who can save them is, of course, played by the world’s oldest living woman Maria Branyas Morera, who underwent a grueling 12-month NASA training program so that her body could withstand the effects of a zero gravity enviroment.
While none of these measures would have been easy, they would have been worth it to avoid attending yet another funeral for a Diane Keaton film.
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