Das total ausgeflippte Sommercamp

There are lots of other 80s movies that I enjoy. But this one is something special. I always feel like the "summer camp" genre of movie has been ruined by certain other ones...Meatballs...Party Camp, and so on. Poison Ivy accurately captures the sense of humor a young camper has. From a logical point of view, there's some real nonsense (why exactly does Disbro dress up like that?) but it still provides perfectly clean fun.

There are a few problems. Most of them are technical (sound mixing) and directorial choices, but those problems don't detract from the enjoyabilty of the movie.

This movie is also noteworthy for two other things: 1 - This captures the essence of the 80s Michael J Fox. Those glittering closeups on his face really just say it all and 2 - It's highly quotable. I have two friends who also saw this when they were younger, and it's a ball to exchange quotes with them periodically.

Poison Ivy is a funny story revolving around a counselor (Michael J. Fox) and his five campers at a boys' camp called Camp Pinewood. Dennis Baxter (Fox) is looking for love in all the wrong places, until he meets the beautiful Rhonda (Nancy McKeon), the assistant camp nurse. The trouble is, she's already engaged to be married and isn't interested. Dennis's 11-year-old campers each have adventures of their own -- one wants to escape from camp, another tries to woo Rhonda (and takes a romp in poison ivy in order to spend more time in the infirmary with a certain someone), and another devises a scheme to get all the camp goodies into his bunk's possession. It's one adventure after another for these kids, as they learn about loyalty and standing up for what's right.

As a child of the 1980's I remember this movie vividly, although I haven't seen it in years. Michael J. Fox, (right before "Back to the Future") and Nancy McKeon, ("The Facts of Life" still had 'life') were romantically linked. Robert Klein has always been an underrated comedian, Adam Baldwin has gone on to many film roles since, ("Independence Day", "Predator 2") and young Carey Guffy was the little tyke in the Spielberg classic "Close Encounters". The rest of the cast is good and so's the whole pacing of the nominal story, ("This is color war! Your friend could be your enemy!"). It's a curious little movie, although I doubt Mr. Fox would like it if some talk show host dragged the footage out! Forget "Meatballs", if you can find this on video or TV, (Ted Turner used to run this a lot during the summer as I remember), it will be worth your time. If you like summer camp films, that is.

Final rating: 6.75/10 "An above average film. Well made and enjoyable, but nothing to 'write home about' (get it?)."

Just your typical summer camp movie that follows the basic formula of a little romance, a few troubled youths, and some sort of friendly competition near the end. Well not all that friendly as one team tries to rig one of the events in a very unfair and mean spirited way. I would try to talk about the plot more, but it has been forever since I saw this movie as a kid. I figured I would review it though as I am not really keen on tracking this movie down and seeing it again. From what I remember though it is a better summer camp movie than say Meatballs 2, but not as good as the original or as different as say white water summer or that kind of creepy one where the kids take over the camp and everything goes berserk. What you basically get is the same old clichés and story lines. The only other parts that stand out other than the boy who learns how to do the backstroke is the story of the man who lives by himself in a cabin and has what appears to be blood on his hatchet.

I remember watching this back when it came out in the 80's.

I also remember going to a summer camp in Central Florida that had a counselor nicknamed Beetle Bailey that reminded me of Michael J. Fox.

I watched Family Ties and thought the resemblance was striking even back then.

I always wondered if he, Michael, did a little background work by doing some Summer camp duties for this role.

I wonder if anyone else (besides my older brother) who was at this camp and remembers this person Beetle Bailey at the camp?