A fresh spin on a familiar genre is completely let down by its messy, ludicrous and fatally cringey script.
Coming of age stories and stories set at summer camp are already oversaturated to say the least. Troublesome teens hate camp! They hate rules and they certainly won’t bend their rebellious morals to suit the people of authority, maybe they’ll even learn a lesson? In the same spirit as classics like The Breakfast Club or Dazed and Confused, the camp movie attempts to offer us a realistic vision of youth on the verge of adulthood and the messy trial and error this era brings. Think Wet Hot American Summer or in this case dry cold Scottish winter.
In actor turned feature director Georges Jacques’s sophomore effort Sunny Dancer the added element of a camp for kids who have all struggled with cancer should offer something different. Alas, Jacques only shows miniscule glimpses of the wasted potential of a film he drowns in an excruciatingly sugary and downright messy glut of clichèd corniness.
We are introduced to 17 year old Ivy (Bella Ramsey) angry and upset at the world, miserable in her room after failing to reignite her life since surviving cancer. Her overly peppy and irritating “lets embarrass our daughter because it’s so funny and fun” parents (Jessica Gunning and James Norton) have signed her up to what Ivy disparagingly refers to as “chemo camp” in a move they hope will reinvigorate her. Ivy is the classic quippy, sarcastic and sweary caricature you could pluck out of a straight to Netflix teen comedy at random and she’s only the tip of the iceberg.
Initially standoffish and combative towards cheery camp leader Patrick (Neil Patrick Harris) Ivy begins to integrate herself with a ragtag group of kids at “CRF camp” who are the only ones that can possibly understand what she has gone through. She falls for the sweet but dull Jake (Daniel Quinn-Toye), then there’s her overbearing cabin-mate Ella (Ruby Stokes), foul-mouthed and perpetually “badass” presenting Ralph (Earl Cave), the reserved Archie or “Rashvest” (Conrad Khan) and finally the confusingly tarot card fixated Maisie (Jasmine Alcock) There are occasional funny moments amongst a barrage of jokes that mostly defy realistic human interaction, especially when each member of the friendship group is as broadly and generically drawn as the next.
The script is all over the place, barreling from one inconsequential feel good scene to the next. There are countless ill-advised needle drops and an insistence on playing the Scissor Sisters ‘ “I don’t feel like dancing” as much as physically possible to manufacture a series of intendedly heartwarming plot beats. It is simply impossible to escape the tense gut feeling of watching Sunny Dancer because there is no telling what sort of unbearable dialogue might come out of someone’s mouth next.
That’s not to say there aren’t important details and the film is admirably tender and frank about discussing things like medication and how cancer survivors live in fear of both its return and people’s attitude after the diagnosis. The best parts encourage each character to describe their personal processes and feelings towards the most universally understood disease with the second highest mortality rate in the world. It’s a shame Jaqces so often seeks to signpost these moments as profound, decimating any subtly the film would greatly benefit from.
VERDICT: 2/5
The final nail in the coffin is an outrageous and frankly insulting plot twist which could be close to the greatest script “don’t write that in” 101. Any good will towards the handling of sensitive topical issues in Sunny Dancer fails to shine through as authentic because almost everything is presented as completely generic, well trodden genre fare.
