Amanda Lynn

Yikes! Like many other children of the 90's evangelical craze, I decided to watch this nostalgia wave in spite of conventional wisdom. I expected poor quality plotline and pandering message giving with an all to tame redeemable "rebel" protagonist. I even expected the sincerely troubling theology. But I would not have bothered to write a review of it weren't for the egregiously tone-deaf indigenous cultural appropriation that David Koechner don's that is entirely tangential to the plot line and somehow makes the cut regardless of its obvious impropriety. It's a bizarre choice to market a movie like this that plays on the nostalgia of a generation that has largely realized the troubling embattled experience of a colonialized, white-centric, capitalist faith. Not even the self-indulgent cameos from 90s CCM darlings Amy Grant and Steven Curtis Chapman can rescue this bizarre trip down memory lane that attempts to be timeless and set in modern time while being anachronistically out of date and out of touch, all while trying to capitalize on the High School Musical resurgence with a balding 24 year old Zac Efron impersonator. The film's saving grace that makes it palatable and allows for 2 stars instead of one, is simply the generally well-executed choreography, good (if not unimaginative) musical arrangements, and the movie's accidentally ironic portrayal of the problems of modern Christianity, including its whiteness, (race is represented by only two speaking characters, who remain supporting characters), it's need to exploit emotionality, the "bait n switch" method of enacting charity, the choice to have an environmental cause be a mockable trait in a narcissistic side character who is likely on track to work in ministry on day, and the absurdity of purity culture manifest in the swim costumes of all of the campers.