Summary
- Theater Camp has the potential to become a cult classic thanks to its improvisation and unique format.
- Cult classics are often unexpected and stand apart from mainstream films.
- Theater Camp’s, like many cult classics, features a musical component.
After a whirlwind year that began at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2023, mockumentary Theater Camp is available to stream on Hulu, which gives a wider audience the chance to finally see this hilarious and heartwarming film. It brings up the film’s ability to gather a cult following and potentially garner cult classic status. Theater Camp was co-directed by Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman, who also co-wrote the film with Noah Galvin and Ben Platt. Gordon and Platt, who met at a theater camp as children, co-star in the movie along with Galvin and a host of supporting actors, including a band of children that help make the film what it is.
Set at a summer camp in the Adirondack Mountains, Theater Camp begins when the head of Camp AdirondActs, Joan, ends up in a coma, and the counselors have to fend for themselves — and deal with Joan’s son, Troy, played perfectly by Jimmy Tatro, who audiences will likely remember from Netflix’s American Vandal. To the dismay of the instructors, Troy would rather be a YouTube business phenomenon than have anything to do with a theater camp. With its unique format, entertaining cast members, and witty, mostly improvised dialogue, Theater Camp is bound to be a film people watch over and over again.
Raking in a Cult Following
Any time a film is made, the hope is that it will have an incredible opening weekend in movie theaters and receive rave reviews from critics. While any film can have a great weekend, whether it is independent or made by one of the major studios, it can also have a bad opening weekend or receive not-so-stellar reviews. Sometimes, even when critics are harsh and box office returns aren’t what people expected, audiences are so drawn to a film that a cult-like love for it lasts well beyond its run in the theater, making it into a “cult classic.”
Cult classic films typically have a few components that make them different from a classic film or a box office hit. Often these films don’t do as well in the theater or with the critics, though that can vary from film to film. More often, what audiences will see with cult classics are films with an unusual format or maybe a storyline that feels too “weird” for the mainstream. Films like The Outsiders (1983), Napoleon Dynamite (2004), and Cruel Intentions (1999) are considered cult classics because of their relatively unknown casts — at least at the time — and their unexpected storylines. Fans of cult classic movies often have specific quotes they all know, scenes they discuss together, or songs that they all play on repeat to remember the films they love so much.
Some of the Best Cult Classics Are Musical
One of the unique things about a lot of cult classic films is that they have a musical component that might not necessarily show up in a “mainstream” movie. Plenty of box office hits are also musicals, but cult classics tend to have musical moments in what would otherwise be a straight film, have a soundtrack of songs with unusual lyrics or themes, or use an unexpected song at an important moment in the film. One of the best examples of this is in Cruel Intentions, when “Bitter Sweet Symphony” by The Verve plays over the final moments of the film. It is considered one of the most iconic cult film moments to date.
Perhaps the most well-known cult classic that is also a musical is The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975). Based on the 1973 stage production The Rocky Horror Show, which is a tribute to science fiction and B movies that were popular between 1930 and 1960, The Rocky Horror Picture Show initially had a terrible theater run. It wasn’t until Rocky Horror became a midnight movie that it would pick up its fan base. Now, midnight showings of the film run in nearly every state, sometimes year-round, though the show runs most often near Halloween. Moviegoers typically dress up, and there are singalongs, callbacks for the audience to yell during the film, and even the occasional live-action reenactment performed while the movie runs. Rocky Horror‘s cult-like following even led to it being selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress in 2005. It is films like The Rocky Horror Picture Show that paved the way for films like Theater Camp to succeed.
Theater Camp’s Format Will Help it Succeed
While Theater Camp begins its ascent to cult classic status thanks to its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, it is the format of the film that takes it to the next level. As a mockumentary, the film already feels authentic and wickedly funny, but Gordon, Lieberman, Galvin, and Platt took it a step further by creating a film that was 90% improvised. While some films feature improvised moments, there are only a small number that can boast that more than 50% of the film is improvised — films like This Is Spinal Tap (1984), Best in Show (2000), Dumb & Dumber (1994), and The Blair Witch Project (1999) are some of the more well-known improvised films. Theater Camp has a vibe that matches Christopher Guest’s Waiting for Guffman (1996), though the addition of children makes it particularly distinct. Molly Gordon mentioned in at least two interviews that it took them six years to get funding for the film because people were unsure their format would work with children.
Theater Camp also has some of the other major components of a cult classic film. There are scenes that surprise and delight, like when an unexpected understudy appears on stage as “Old Joan” in the final production of “Joan, Still,” or when Janet Walch (Ayo Edebiri, who is currently co-starring in The Bear) tries to teach the children literally anything. At multiple times during the film’s 90-minute run, music plays an important role in the storyline, both directly as part of the performances and indirectly as background music. There are also moments from both the children and adult characters that will be quotable for years to come, like when the power is out, and the children are sitting together in the dark, manifesting their parts in the shows. “Peters, Streisand, Foster, LuPone, give us a role we can make our own,” they chant. “Audra McDonald, Idina Menzel, we are gay witches and this is our spell.”
The response to Theater Camp has been predominantly positive, which some might argue automatically means that it cannot be considered a cult classic. What’s most true about cult classics is that there is a smaller group of people that have developed a cult-like fanaticism for the movie, which can also be true for films that do well at the box office. Movies like Mean Girls (2004), Shaun of the Dead (2004), and From Dusk Til Dawn (1996) all did well in their opening weekends or initial runs but are considered cult classics because of their status as an independent film, the storyline of the movie, or even because quotes from the film have made their way into the cultural zeitgeist. Theater Camp fits beautifully in this same space and is likely to make an impact on pop culture and the film industry for many, many years.