Heavyweights (1995)

 

This movie sucks. So the other night I was up late, made a midnight snack, and decided to watch something. And to pass the time I threw this on. I had only heard of it but not watched it. And my god. I wish I could go back to just hearing about it. How bad is it? Well, Ben Stiller used it as a blueprint to avoid being typecast. But is that all there is? I wish there was but lets get into it.

The movie revolves around young Gerry Garner (Aaron Schwartz) whose dad Maury (Jeffrey Tambor) sends him to fat camp. The camp itself, Camp Hope run by Mr. and Mrs. Bushkin (Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara) tell the camp they're selling it to a fitness guru Tony Perkis (Ben Stiller). Perkis is a wackjob. A nutbar. A wack-a-doo. Gerry meets some new friends Roy (Kenan Thompson) and Josh (Shaun Weiss) as his cabin mates. Gerry also grows close to camp counselor Pat (Tom McGowan) whose worked at the camp for nearly twenty years, Tim (Paul Feig) a former camper now counselor who lost tons of weight but is drawn by temptation, and Julie (Leah Lail) the camp nurse and eventual love interest to Pat. There's also Perkis camp counselor Lars (Tom Hodges, fellow Chicago native) whose whole job is just being dumb and strong. Perkis is a monster. He deprives the kids of food, over exerts them with extreme exercises. As mentioned before, Perkis is also off his fucking rocker. He takes the kids on a hike and threatens to kill the kids because he thinks they're conspiring against them. Am I forgetting something? Oh yeah, after Perkis is fired and Pat is named new owner of Camp Hope by Tony Perkis Sr. (Ben Stiller in a dual role) they compete in a triathlon with Camp MVP, a sports camp across the lake and win.

Okay now that the plot summary is out of the way lets get into the nitty gritty. This movie sucks. But why? And how? The movie was directed by Adam Sandler alum Steven Brill. It was written by Brill and comedic director Judd Apatow. For the cast you got Ben Stiller, Tom McGowan, Jeffrey Tambor, a young Kenan Thompson, the head counselor of Camp MVP is played by UHF co-star David Bowe, this movie is the introduction of Tim Blake Nelson, Paul Feig before he decided to make terrible movies, Jerry Stiller alone! Father of George Costanza! This movie had such power behind it. So why did it suck? Well, despite having such comedy talent in front of and behind the camera, the movie just falls flat. The idea of a fat camp and a crazy camp counselor can only go so far. I did hear that Ben Stiller used this movie as a blue print to not get type cast, but in my opinion, feels like he played this character in a lot of his other films until he started doing dramatic work. So he ended up getting typecast anyway.

All in all a decent movie but not good. I give it two skulls out of five, wouldn't recommend it. Steve says: Fat camp? I'm not going to fat camp!

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