Camp Nowhere

It's actually for kids. No, really.

Camp Nowhere is a 1994 comedy about a kid-run summer camp, starring Christopher Lloyd.

Every year, junior high schoolers Mud, Gaby, Zack, and Trish are sent to summer camps their parents choose for them, but they hate: computer camp, fat camp, military camp, and drama camp, respectively. So, they decide this year is going to be different, and they are going to go somewhere they can be kids and have fun: A camp with no parents, no teachers, no camp counselors, and no rules.

Out-of-work actor/drama teacher Dennis Van Welker (Lloyd) owes back payment on his car, and a debt collector is on his trail. Said debt collector is retiring, and wants to do so with a perfect record. Dennis, in turn, has to find some way to hide and/or come up with the cash.

The four junior high kids hire Dennis to pose as the lead counselor for each of their camps, while convincing their parents that they cannot visit. Word about the plan gets out to the whole school about the plan, and they have to find a way to keep everyone on the outside, on the outside. The kids have fun, doing things they never would have been able to do with adults watching. It soon becomes difficult to keep the camp a secret.

Tropes used in Camp Nowhere include:
  • Actor Allusion: Dennis, played by Christopher Lloyd, is rivaled against Hendricks, played by Thomas F. Wilson. Remind anyone of anything?
    • Dennis also falls in love with someone he has to lie to, as Doc Brown did in Back to the Future Part III. And in both cases, the love interest forgives him.
    • Feln mentions that he's going to Florida, a brief nod to Burgess Meredith's time as a voiceover announcer for Florida Orange Juice commercials.
  • Adorkable: Mud, as Lampshaded by Gaby.
  • All Girls Want Bad Boys: Trish and Zack are an item by the end of the film.
  • Analogy Backfire: Played straight, then subverted, during a scene where Dennis is seen listening to some old Winston Churchill recordings.

Mud: What is that?
Dennis: Winston Churchill. The Jimi Hendrix of the spoken word.
Mud: Who's Jimi Hendrix?
Dennis: The Michael Jordan of the electric guitar.

  • And Starring: The first credit in the closing credits: "With Burgess Meredith"
  • A-Team Montage: When the kids put together their Con.
  • Black Best Friend: Walter, for Mud.
  • Bittersweet Ending: All things considered, it's a relatively light one. Everyone thanks Mud and Dennis for a great summer, neither one gets arrested, and Polk gets paid off. But it's right after the scheme falls apart completely, all the kids get sent home, and Mud gets grounded for a LONG time.
  • Bourgeois Bohemian / Hippie Teacher: Dennis. When Feln tells them that the camp used to be a hippie commune, Dennis suddenly remembers having been there before.
  • Chekhov's Gun:
    • The 5:15 flyby from the nearby Air Force base later comes in handy during the phony Parents' Day.
    • The broken down car that the kids find and Zack fixes becomes Dennis' new car.
  • Chewing the Scenery: Dennis in nearly everything he does. Christopher Lloyd had fun with this role.
  • Childhood Dating Promise: Mud and Gaby make a pact to only date former geeks--or more specifically, date each other--as soon as they're old enough.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: Dennis yet again. He got fired from his teaching job for trying to do Silence of the Lambs as a musical, and that's only the least odd thing he's done.
  • Cool Loser: Mud, though a lot of it has to do with his self-confidence.
  • Cool People Rebel Against Authority: Zack's modus operandi.
  • Covers Always Lie:
    • First, there's the page image above, which seems to make the movie out to be the second coming of Animal House. In fact, the movie was a kids' movie and NOTHING like Animal House, but you wouldn't know it by looking at that poster.[1]
To wit: there were no supermodels in string bikinis and daisy dukes (there was probably only one bikini in the entire movie, and it was far more modest), the kids didn't tie up a guy in a suit and spray him with water, and most of the cast was in junior high school. But there were Super Soakers, so that poster wasn't completely wrong.

Gaby: Ashley, mushroom. Amber, onion. Lenny, plain.
Lenny: Cheese.
Gaby: You said plain.
Lenny: Cheese.
Gaby: Plain.
Lenny: Cheese.
Gaby: Plain.
Lenny: Cheese.
Gaby: Plain.
Lenny: Cheese.
Gaby: Plain.
Lenny: Cheese.
Gaby: Cheese.
Lenny: Plain.
Gaby: Okay, fine, you win. Plain.
[He looks confused and wanders off]
Gaby: Who says you can't learn anything from cartoons?

  • Education Mama: Mud's dad is a rare male version. He's constantly opining that Mud "has potential," and keeps pushing Mud to grow up early. Mud complains that his dad treats him like he's unemployed. Mud is 12.
  • Eureka Moment:

Zack: I say, just give me the money, I'll buy a Harley, and be outta your way the whole summer.
Mud: That kind of money, we could just rent our own camp.
Zack: Whoa...whoa! What'd you say?

  • Fake Real Turn: The kids set up a fake summer camp in order to get away from the adults, but then when parents insist on coming to the camp halfway through the summer, they have to devise a way to make the camp seem real.
  • Follow the Leader:
    • Camp Nowhere follows Home Alone inasmuch as both movies' climaxes feature a kid (or kids) planning to use Homemade Inventions on unwitting adults.
    • Following Camp Nowhere, the 1995 movie Heavyweights also featured kids taking over a summer camp and rebelling against responsibility. (Incidentally, both movies are owned by Disney.)
  • Four Lines, All Waiting: There are more than a few plots going on in this movie.
    • There's the main plot about the camp and keeping up the facade.
    • There are underlying plots about the four leads and their various Character Developments:
      • Mud learns about responsibility and learns how to speak up for himself. Plus, Gaby convinces him that it's okay to be Adorkable, since it makes Mud his own person.
      • Gaby decides that she's sick of eating junk food.
      • Zack decides to drop the Jerkass Facade, be less selfish, and not drop out of school. He and Trish become an item.
      • Concurrently, Trish becomes a Defrosting Ice Queen.
    • There's the plot about Dennis and his financial woes with Polk, though it's punctuated by Dennis' romance with Celeste.
    • Then there are the very minor subplots about Walter wanting to skinny dip with Betty, and Zack rebuilding an old car.
  • Free-Range Children: Played with. Mud and his friends start out playing the trope straight during their adventures recruiting Dennis and setting up the camp. However, some ramifications of being a free-range child are felt later on, and the characters realize that they need adults in their lives more often than they previously thought. Still, they're pretty resourceful right up until the ploy falls apart.
  • Friendly Enemy: At the beginning of the movie, Zack pretends to bully Mud, but the two are actually friends (Zack just has a reputation to uphold).
  • Getting Crap Past the Radar: Quite a bit.
  • Gilligan Cut: When Mud gives the others some of the spending money.

Mud: Be careful how you spend it, all right? Because it's gotta last for the whole summer. Besides, we don't want to draw attention to ourselves, all right?
Arnold: We're not gonna do anything stupid. I mean, we're not complete morons.
[cut to delivery trucks unloading, among other things, Super Soakers and a big-screen TV]

Betty: You really do have the guts. Just not an extra bathing suit.

  • Gratuitous French / Verbal Tic: Trish's use of the word "très" (meaning "very") in nearly every other sentence. For instance, she says things like "Très dull," or "Très bizarre." Might be Justified because of her upbringing.
  • Growing Up Sucks: The movie meanders about with this. Mud learns about responsibility and whatnot, and he begins to look forward to growing up and dating Gaby, but at the same time he refuses to eat lima beans and still acts like growing up is the worst thing in the world. He finally asserts himself and tells his father that it's okay to be a kid.
  • Heroes Want Redheads: Celeste is a redhead, and Dennis falls for her.
  • Heroic BSOD: Mud has one when he realizes he's becoming a killjoy like his parents. Gaby snaps him out of it with a Patrick Stewart Speech.
  • Hollywood Law: It doesn't matter if Mud and his friends take responsibility for the camp. Dennis went along with the kids' plan and took the parents' money under false pretenses. Dennis could possibly go to jail for fraud.
  • I Am Spartacus: When the scheme is blown, all the other kids stand up and take responsibility alongside Mud.
  • If It Tastes Bad, It Must Be Good for You: Invoked by Gaby and Dennis when they trick her mother into sending her to the (hypothetical) fitness camp. They sample some camp cuisine--Dennis and Gaby eat real chocolate cake, and Gaby's mom is given something that convinces her the camp must be doing something right with its food.

Dennis: Yours is Betty Crocker. Hers is raw liver paste.
Gaby: So if it tastes like poison, it MUST be diet food.

Clerk: ID? You gotta be 19 to buy this stuff.
Zack: No problemo. [hands over ID]
Clerk: You were born in 1963?
Zack: Yeah.
Clerk: So that would make you?
Zack: 21.
Clerk: No. This is 1994. That would make you 31.
Trish: Wrong! If he was born in 1963, and he's 21, then it's 1984! Uh!

  • Setting Update: Not so much this movie, but the 2006 movie Accepted was pretty much Camp Nowhere set in college. Explained in this article.
  • Spanner in the Works:
    • Walter does some research and finds out that Mud and the others are planning to go to a non-existent camp. Walter tells Betty. Betty tells everyone else.
    • Celeste starts dating Dennis and later finds out about the camp. However, she doesn't tell anyone.
    • At the end of the movie, Polk shows up at precisely the wrong moment at the very end of The Con, and he and Mud's dad stumble into the ruse right as the kids are toasting their victory. Had Polk shown up any later, the ruse could have been kept up.
  • Stage Mom: Trish's mom.
  • Summer Campy
  • Technology Marches On: Have a look at the cutting edge early-90's computers and NESes! Plus, the entire ploy would have been meaningless had Google existed in 1994.
  • Team Mom / Team Dad: Gaby and Mud, respectively. They even Lampshade it during the omelette scene.
  • Teenage Wasteland: The titular camp is the Lighter and Softer, pre-teen version. Dennis is the only adult around, and even then...
  • Third-Act Stupidity: After having spent the entire movie managing to keep from getting busted, and after spending most of Parents' Day fooling the parents, the kids start celebrating their victory before the last group of parents has left. Had the kids paid ANY attention to their security monitors, they would have noticed Polk at the front gate. Things obviously get worse when Polk runs into Mud's dad.
  • Token Romance: Dennis/Celeste, Zack/Trish, Mud/Gaby.
  • Unusual Euphemism: "Hey midget! Find my Waldo!" "WHAT Waldo?"
  1. ↑ Which can be seen larger here.
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