One of my biggest regrets from this year’s Sundance Film Festival was missing out on the quirky indie comedy “Theater Camp”. There was a lot of audience buzz following its festival premiere and I was even more intrigued after Searchlight dropped around $8 million to acquire it with the promise of a theater release.

“Theater Camp” is based on a pandemic era short film of the same name created by Molly Gordon, Ben Platt, Noah Galvin, and Nick Lieberman. The 18-minute parody quickly earned the admiration of performing arts types and self-proclaimed theater geeks. As a result the four friends begin putting the pieces together for a feature film adaptation which sounds like a good idea considering their genuinely funny premise.

Unfortunately “Theater Camp” feels like a short film’s worth of material stretched out to feature film length. Written by Gordon, Galvin, Platt, and Lieberman (Gordon and Lieberman also directed), the film is a kind of self-gratifying exercise that can’t really justify its existence. Sure, it’ll click with certain audiences who have a high tolerance for the in-jokes and shaky improv. But squeezing much more out of this promising turned lackluster comedy proves to be a chore.

Admittedly I was all-in with the film early on – its wacky introduction, its mockumentary style (tired I know, but they can be funny), its gleeful embrace of self-parody. But the wackiness quickly begins to dry up, the mockumentary style all but vanishes, and the self-parody grows redundant as the filmmakers milk their one-note premise dry. It leaves the movie feeling like a Saturday Night Live skit stuck on repeat.

Platt and Gordon play lifelong codependent best friends Amos and Rebecca-Diane who teach at AdirondACTS, a struggling summer drama camp for kids in upstate New York. During the off-season, camp founder Joan Rubinsky (Amy Sedaris) and camp manager Rita Cohen (Caroline Aaron) scramble to raise money and recruit young students in order to keep the camp afloat. But things go south after Joan has a seizure that puts her in a coma (we barely see Sedaris again which is a shame. The film could have really used her). As a result it falls to her dimwitted and theater illiterate son Troy (Jimmy Tatro) to run the camp in her absence.

That sets the film’s paper-thin plot in motion. Amos and Rebecca-Diane along with the other staff (most woefully shallow and always cranked up to 10) welcome a new group of kids and begin preparing for their summer production. Meanwhile with the bank only weeks away from foreclosing, the ill-equipped Troy tries to fend off the advances of a well-to-do neighboring camp who have long wanted to gobble up Adirond ACTS for their property.

While there are stray gags that land throughout the movie, it doesn’t take long before it runs out of steam. The high-strung theater sessions, ludicrous acting exercises, and the utter lack of camp cohesion will have you believing you’re watching a disaster. Yet it all culminates in an ending you’ll see coming a mile away – an absurdly picture-perfect stage production that’s so implausible due to the absolute chaos that has preceded it. But to be honest, I’m not sure the film is all that worried about stuff like that. It’s much too busy laughing at its own jokes and wearing out its welcome. “Theater Camp” opens in theaters July 21st.

VERDICT – 2 STARS