Our Paul Gratton takes a look at the new limited release The Floaters, now in theatres in the US & Canada.
About: In The Floaters, a freshly ousted rock musician named Nomi (Jackie Tohn) takes a last-resort job from her best friend and camp director Mara (Sarah Podemski) at their childhood Jewish summer camp. Tasked with mentoring a group of unattached misfit teens known as “the floaters,” Nomi rejects safe camp traditions to help the youths stage an unconventional production, ultimately rallying together to face a wealthy rival camp.
Reaction: In 1979, a little Canadian movie called Meatballs starring a young Bill Murray unleashed a decade of amiable but sophomoric summer camp movies. And now, some 45 years later, most of the cliches of the genre are resurrected and given a culturally specific spin in The Floaters, an update set in a Jewish summer retreat for teens called Camp Daveed. Jackie Tohn plays a shreeking lead singer who understandably gets fired from her punk rock band about to go on tour. A friend of hers offers her a summer gig as a camp counsellor, specifically assigned to take care of the floaters. The floaters refers to the more alienated youths who don’t really want to fit in or join in any group activities. As one blonde-locked bad boy sent by his father to Camp Daveed to “make connections” blurts out : “these people are Jewish!-Jewish”. Summer romance, reluctant councillors, petty rivalries and mischievous hijinks, even a $30,000 prize contest against a rival summer camp all get recycled from previous summer camp movies with an overlay of Jewish humour. Our bad boy provides just a hint of Dirty Dancing titillation, as the floaters are encouraged to put on a stage musical in the style of Fiddler on the Roof. Instead, the misfits decide to follow their creative muse and shock the camp with a musical version of Sodom and Gomorrah. In an age of increasing anti-semitism, it is nice to see a film that positively celebrates Jewish culture. If you ever attended a Jewish camp yourself, you might even rate this film a 6/10. Hava nagila.
Rating: 4 out of 10
