Movie Nation

Ex-con, con artist and beloved conservative “academic” Dinesh D’Souza’s latest wingnut documentary wasn’t his biggest hit.

But he’s made a pretty good living filming distortions of fact and history that play like Sean Hannity’s talking points on $787 million dollar settlement -Fox News. D’Souza, an Indian immigrant and election law violating felon, made an easy leap from academia to lecturing American conservatives on what they wanted to hear about our country, our history and our government — when it isn’t in the hands of felons.

However, as Rudy Giuliani found out when he started naming people and calling them election stealing “criminals,” when the facts don’t back to you, your lies will cost you a boatload of money.

D’Souza’s blathering blizzard of lies “2000 Mules” has been pulled from distribution as part of a settlement of a suit filed by someone D’Souza named as an election law violator.

Granted, he is an expert on the subject. But like most of what comes off his keyboard and out of his “Check my immigration status” mouth, it was a lie. “2000 Mules,” the “election fraud” alleging book and the film, will vanish. Will the Trump-allied con man ever get to make another movie?

His last “documentary,” like all the others, was a shameless distortion of the meaning of the word. All he’s ever “documented “was his smug willingness to pander to people gullible enough to believe his BS.

Great run while it lasted, eh Trumpling?

A couple of good action beats and half-decent climactic fight don’t alter the impression of “Bionic,” a cheesy Brazilian thriller about the bionic future of sports, and the crime that can be carried out when there are literal super humans among us.

Shrug off the low-stakes involved, try not to notice its too-easy-to-guess “twist” and forget any notion of the moral ambiguity that might have been what this picture is about. It’s slick, but just too dumb to get into.

Jessica Córes is our heroine and narrator, Maria, a long jumper and daughter of a world champion at the sport. When we meet her, she’s half-resigned to being second best to her younger sister (Gabz). She’ll never be as good as Gabi.

But it’s 2035, the “revolution” in sports is that bionics are competing in their own Olympics, and taking all the prize money and endorsements. Gabi lost a leg to cancer and was given a replacement that’s “faster, stronger” and metallic.

As athletes are willing to dive into “the new doping,” injuring themselves to get bionic improvements, that’s been made illegal. But Heitor (Bruno Gagliasso) is trying to do something about that. That’s why his bionic ex-boxer brother visits a safe deposit vault, assembles a bionic arm from a couple of boxes he opens, and raids the vault of diamonds after beating up the banker and a bunch of cops.

They’ll be able to buy black market NIMS chips that will allow athletes to make themselves bionic without permission, “freeing” them. Or so Heitor says.

The boxer brother dies, but Heitor seeks new bionics to help him achieve his aims. Maria gets his attention, and when she has a convenient accident, she takes on a bionic leg that will give her an athletic edge and Heitor an ally in whatever he’s got cooked up.

We and she figure out the obvious when she’s called into service.

“You’re supposed to HELP people, Heitor! Not MURDER them!”

Generic bionic training scenes set up the parameters. You don’t want to exceed “the chip’s capacity.” Sibling rivalry on the track is given a whiz-bang TV coverage holographic element as each outleaps the other.

The production design team gives the film a “Blade Runner” neon holography sheen, entire buildings turned into commercials and animated billboards shimmering on the rainy streets.

But the capers are generic, the stakes low, the characters thinly-developed and the odd cool effect can’t overcome how uninteresting this entire story and those facing off in it are, start to finish.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, sexual situations

Cast:Jessica Córes, Gabz, Bruno Gagliasso and Christian Malheiros

Credits: Directed by Afonso Poyart, scripted by Josefina Trotta. A Netflix release

Running time: 1:50

An alcoholic’s memoir becomes a Saoirse Ronan drama.

Looks scenic and dreamy, sounds literary, if a tad overfamiliar.

Keep an eye out for this one.

Just when you thought Kevin Hart was maybe figuring out that the “action star” shtick wasn’t really meant for “the little man.”

Just when you figured Netflix was the only sucker to buy into this wildly successful comic and product pitchman, a walking, joking “brand” who moved into reality TV about his “life” (or a fictionalized version of it), that “Lift” was his nadir, here comes Amazon to throw more money at him for a sequel to his “Die Hart” wet dream.

That series, about Kevin Hart hellbent on making that “action star” thing happen, ended up with him starring in a violent, action-packed reboot of “The Jeffersons,” just a comic actor realizing his dream. By the time it morphed into a “Die Hart”feature film, he had the likes of John Travolta, Josh Hartnett and Jean Reno in on the joke.

Of course, that experience only made him cockier, in front of and behind the camera. For the streaming feature film “Die Hart 2: Die Harter,” Kevin Hart plays Kevin Hart as a stupidly-rich, in-demand comedy star who decides he does his own stunts and pays a price for firing his stunt man.

Whatever virtues there are in the fights and chases here, and there aren’t many, the fact that there’s maybe one laugh in this sequel should be telling.

You USED to be funny, man. You used to make jokes, play funny characters and act in movies. This? This is just “content” pouring out of your make-another-buck-quick brain stem.

Nathalie Emmanuel plays Jordan, his reluctant co-star when Hart can’t get a studio to buy into his “improvised script” action extravaganza. Making a lunch-date pitch to a studio chief at a tony restaurant where Hart hires legions of bad guy stuntmen to take all the patrons hostage so he can show how badass he is by fighting his way out doesn’t work.

A mysterious Euro-backer has him convinced that the tranquilizer dart kidnapping of himself and Jordan is “part of the movie.” He’s “acting” for cameras that he’s sure are there.

Wait, that wasn’t scripted. “Rewrite? Pink pages?”

Very “Bowfinger.” Until first blood is drawn. Then they’re scrambling for their lives to figure out who’s out to kill them. Maybe the guy who trained the fired stunt man (also played by Hart) has some insight. He’s played by John Cena. He, too, can be funny. Just not here.

Cena’s the only big name star to sign on for this barely-scripted sequel. Ben Schwartz plays the over-eager assistant who lands that lone laugh. And he has to get tased to accomplish that.

The script is slapdash to the point of half-assed. It’s more of a concept, with added one-liners (meh) than a plotted picture. The direction, by “Die Hart” and “Weird: The Weird Al Yankovich Story” helmer Eric Appel, is as generic as all the TV he and Hart have made together.

Hart jokes about the arc of the movie-within-a-movie’s unfolding “plot,” how it’ll take a moment to show “This is me, now” and lecture him on how he’s “forgotten who you are, where you come from.”

Nope. That’s not it at all. Hart’s the same guy he’s always been — eager, grabbing every opportunity, even the ones not worthy of someone with his standing and bank account.

Hart’s a workaholic, so much so that keeping track of all the stuff he’s got in the works, online or wherever has got to be several assistants’ full time jobs. But he’s not the least bit selective. He’s lost the plot, and is just cashing in as fast as he can.

A former child star (“Freaks & Geeks”) who transitioned to ensemble comedies (“Think Like a Man”), buddy pictures galore (“Ride Along,” etc.) and blew up the stand-up world with stadium shows and self-financed films of those shows which made him a mint, Hart has long made bragging about his success his brand.

That stopped being funny before the closing credits of the first stand-up film where he trotted that shtick out. It’s way beyond “played” now. And he’s still doing it. And he’ll keep doing it until Netflix and Amazon see evidence that nobody’s watching him play and product-placement-plug “Kevin Hart” any more.

Rating: TV-16, violence, profanity

Cast: Kevin Hart, Nathalie Emmanuel, Ben Schwartz and John Cena.

Credits: Directed by Eric Appel, scripted by Tripper Clancy and Derek Kolstad. An Amazon Prime release.

Running time: 1:32

Brian De Palma was the undisputed king of thrillers in his heyday, with a run of hits, classics and near-misses that began with “Carrie” and ended when his take on Tom Wolfe’s “Bonfire of the Vanities” became one of the greatest flops of its era.

But “Carrie,” “The Fury” and “Dressed to Kill,” “Scarface,” “The Untouchables” and “Casualties of War” was a spectacular run of critically-acclaimed successes. A filmmaker who cultivated a “New Hitchhock” reputation by paying showy homage to the master had most film fans ready to name him the replacement “Master of Suspense.”

“Blow Out” (1981) was a rare box office failure in the middle of that run, with audiences perhaps not inclined to take star John Travolta that seriously — yet — and slow to connect to a movie with hints of The Kennedy Assassination, Chappaquiddick and Watergate in its plotting.

The nods to Hitchcock were still there. But here, he’s more directly borrowing from Michelangelo Antonioni’s “Blow Up,” a ’60s New Wave thriller about a photographer who accidentally captures a murder in the background of a snapshot in the park.

Reviews were decent at the time of release, but in recent years “Blow Out” — about a horror movie soundman who captures audio of a political assassination via a sniper shooting out a politician’s tire — has come to be regarded as perhaps De Palma’s masterpiece.

As I originally saw it as a college student all about public radio and “getting great nat (natural) analog sound,” it’s always been my favorite. Seen now, with its retro technology of celluloid “film” and audio recorded via NAGRA portable reel-to-reel recorders on quarter inch magnetic tape, which was then sliced with razor blades and spliced onto mix tapes for a sound track, it’s an adoring relic for a near forgotten craft.

I remember being dazzled back then. I don’t know if it tops “Dressed to Kill (1980)” or the cultishly adored “Scarface (1983).” But it’s decently-acted, tough, stylish and pitiless, and stands out for a lot more than its pioneering Steadicam (hand-held heavy 35mm film cameras) and famed two minute “360 degree pan” of an editing lab as Travolta’s character frantically searches for “evidence” that has been “magnetically” erased.

Travolta is Jack Terry, a soundman in the horror B-movie market in Philadelphia, a cynic who is sent in search of a more perfect “scream” by his longtime director, and for “fresh” sound effects of wind and the like.

That’s how he’s under that bridge late at night, with its riverside walkway, taping wind and owls and frogs and canoodling lovers. That’s where his all-hearing (exaggerated) “shotgun mike” picks up the sound of a rifle shot just before a sedan blows a tires and careens into the river.

Jack tries to rescue the driver, but finds only a woman (Nancy Allen), gasping for breath as the car sinks. Jack saves her. But in the hospital, this simple heroic act is overshadowed by the dead driver of the car.

“That stiff on the stretcher was probably the next president of the United States!”

Jack comforts the sedated Sally (Allen), and then finds himself strong-armed by the aid (John McMartin) of the dead governor and rival to an unpopular president. The girl “was never there.” Jack won’t “talk.” Etc.

But with her cloud of curls and kewpie doll voice, Sally is irrestible to Jack. As he tries to connect with her, their pact of silence comes under question. The cops and politicos might be willing to hush this all up. The shooter (John Lithgow at his most menacing)? He’s sure to be fretting over “loose ends.”

De Palma allegedly based this James Bond wannabe on Nixon’s aid G. Gordon Liddy, and Lithgow oozes menace and an almost mechanical, on-the-spectrum idea of tidiness. He will kill a few women (starting with the accidental murder of the wrong person), convince the media there’s a “Liberty Bell” serial killer on the loose, and get around to Sally. Eventually.

Jack? He’s smart enough to see the rising threat level and the dangers of anonymity and keeping the story quiet.

The twists are more conventional than Michael Caine in a dress (“Dressed to Kill”), with Dennis Franz as a sleazy private eye, John Aquino as a lazy, paid-to-be-disinterested cop. Jack’s flashback-told back story includes a stretch working — via secret recordings — to help catch crooked cops.

Travolta and Allen, who was married to De Palma at the time, reteam for the first time since “Carrie” to good effect, even if Allen’s character is pretty much a caricature of a “dim” Debby.

The set-pieces they’re hurled through, a Jeep chase through a parade, a mad dash to save a wired-for-sound Sally from the assassin, still pop.

But what blew young film fans away back in the day is the same thing cinephiles still embrace about this homage to Antonioni and Analog. The film’s technique is packed with sizzle, from those hand-held sequences and 360 pans to split screens and split focus (diopter lens) capturing an actor in the background or forground, and something caught in extreme close-up in the other half of the lens-captured image.

Film buffs are often techno nerds, diving into how Kubrick did this, Lucas did that or Hitchcock managed his effects in a simpler “in camera” or “practical” effects era. We went nuts over “Blow Out” when it came out, with or without the fun, inside-film-fandom “Blow Up” connection.

But rewatching it after many years, I had my own flashbacks about my initial reaction. The picture explodes out of the gate, starts to slow as the conspiracy becomes obvious, and peaks at the one hour mark, where that famous 360 degree circling pan turns up.

Everything between there and the Big Finish is relatively forgettable, low-heat “unraveling the plot” exposition and the like.

“Blow Out” is still great, still a classic and still has a bit of the sizzle it came into the world with. But as a pulse-pounding picture, De Palma lets the air out of that tire too soon, and takes a little too long to pump it back in.

Rating: R, graphic violence, sex, nudity, profanity, smoking

Cast: John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, Dennis Franz, John Aquino and John McMartin

Credits: Scripted and directed by Brian De Palma. An MGM release streaming on Tubi, Amazon, et al.

Running time: 1:47

Interesting subject for Angel Studios, those “Sound of Freedom” jackpot winners, to put out in an election year.

But remembering the politics of their fan base, they’ve timidly decided to release this AFTER the election, on Nov. 22.

There’ve been documentaries and even other feature films on Diedrich Bonhoeffer, a Christian hero martyred by the Third Reich.

That’s because Germans and the rest of the world remember a selfless preacher znd theologian who stood up to racism, xenophobia, genocide and other crimes against humanity.

We rarely remember the toadies who joined in the hate-mongering Nazis from the pulpit. There were plenty of those, then and now. Or cowardly film distributors who mute the message of an anti fascist preacher by holding their film’s release until after the mob has already voted.

Jonas Dassler has the title role in a film written and directed by the screenwriter of “The Professor and the Madman” and “Sully,” Todd Komarnicki.” This could be good. Holding it until after the election isn’t good.

I thought there was a newer trailer to this, as I saw one among the previews before catching “Summer  Camp.” When I find it I will replace this one.

Yeah, sure. I still say “Furiosa” is an over-rated, ponderous and repetitive action epic, barely original enough to be worth your time.

But are you REALLY waiting to see this spectacle on your teevee or “other mobile video device?”

That means that on this, the first weekend of June and the weekend after the Memorial Day opening of “Furiosa” and “Garfield,” that the latest iteration of the animated cat will BEAT “Furiosa” at the box office?

That’s how it’s shaping up (per deadline.com). A poor turnout Memorial Day is followed by a box office bottoming out this weekend, for movie theaters and for “Furiosa.” “Garfield,” voiced by Chris Pratt this time out, edged “Furiosa” Friday and is expected to best it Sat. and Sunday — a $14 million or so to $10.7 million humiliation for George Miller, and for Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth.

It’s a family film, kid-oriented. So it is sure to outperform “Furiosa” all the way through June. As “Furiosa” is on track to not finish second but THIRD at the box office (behind “IF”), the shame deepens.

This should not stand. If you’ve ever seen a “Mad Max” movie, have any curiosity at all about “Furiosa,” make your plans. Get out and go see the movie. Warners will lose its shirt over it, otherwise.

“IF” is sticking around, holding audience and may earn as much as $10 million this weekend (updated, $10.8).

“Furiosa” is on tap to pull in $10.7 million, third place. Nobody’s going is turning into “Nobody went.”

“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is also holding onto screens and audience, another $8.8 million there.

“The Fall Guy” cleared $4 million plus and stayed in the Top Five.

“The Strangers: Chapter 1” cleared $3.3 and came in sixth

An anime outing, “Haikyu! The Dumpster Battle,” will earn $3 and will not crack the top five.

IFC’s wide (ish) release “In a Violent Nature” is doing pretty well, but won’t crack the top five ($2.2) either.

It’s no surprise that Ron Howard turns out to be the perfect filmmaker to conjure up an affectionate, admiring and moving documentary on the Man behind the Muppets, Jim Henson.

“Jim Henson: Idea Man,” gets at the creative mind, the work process and the work ethic of a Walt Disney level innovator and entertainer. This sweet, nostalgic and thorough documentary taps into Henson’s wide-ranging curiosity and lifetime of invention, new challenges and collaboration.

There’s a special emphasis on his wife Jane’s role in that Big Idea — the puppet/marionettes they named Muppets, and on Frank Oz, his employee and protege and work “other half.”

And Howard takes care to find just the right people to sing Henson’s praises — EGOT winner Rita Moreno, one of the most memorable “Muppet Show” guests, Oscar winner Jennifer Connelly, who as a child actress co-starred in Henson’s film fantasy “Labyrinth,” and the great Orson Welles, a “genius” of his generation who interviewed Henson for a failed pilot for a TV chat show, and who might have been the first to label Henson a “genius.”

Welles also joked about Henson’s resemblence to “Rasputin,” which fits in with Howard’s other agenda for the film, playing up the sense of fun that drove everything Henson did. There are a lot of laughs in this documentary, all of them provided by Henson’s puppet creations.

What’s freshest about the film is exploring Henson’s determination to experiment, innovate and take big financial risks on his Next Big Thing. He made experimental films — animated and playful live action shorts — almost all of his life. He planned a wildly cinematic kaleidoscopic chain of ’60s discoteques before “Sesame Street” came calling. He did full-body puppet costume screen tests for a possible Broadway show.

“When you get an idea,” Henson narrated in one experimental short, “you have to look at it from every direction.” This, in turn “gives you other ideas.” Henson had a lot of ideas and, collaborating with others, took the time to explore them.

“His inner life must have been sparkling,”marvels Oz, who knew him better than most.

“Idea Man” skips through Henson’s Mississipi childhood (son of a Dept. of Agriculture agronomist) and his childhood fascination with this new gadget, television. As a college freshman (as the University of Maryland), a call went out for a puppeteer on a local Washington, D.C. TV station. Henson, fresh out of a puppetry class at university, grabbed the job.

Months later, he was dead at 53. “Idea Man” takes pains not to blame Henson’s Christian Science upbringing for his reluctance to see a doctor about the strep infection he neglected until it killed him.

That connects to the film’s real subtext. Real “geniuses” are often workaholics. Henson’s puppetry was grueling work, discussed in detail by Oz, who voiced and performed Miss Piggy and scores of other characters, and shown in rare behind the scenes footage of Henson crawling into a space underneath the hull of that flat-bottomed swamp rowboat that we see Kermit the Frog row in “The Muppet Movie” — a boat sitting in a real swamp.

Henson didn’t live long. But his restless mind and energy were devoted to sweet-natured and sometimes challenging entertainment — he never wanted to be a “children’s puppeteer” — that he produced with almost every waking second. “Idea Man” reminds us that the ideas he explored live on after him.

Rating: PG

Cast: Jim Henson, Frank Oz, Fran Brill, Brian Henson, Lisa Henson, Cheryl Henson, Orson Welles, Bernie Brillstein, Rita Moreno and Jennifer Connelly.

Credits: Directed by Ron Howard, scripted by Mark Monroe. A Disney+ release.

Running time: 1:48

A flawed pop icon earns a flawed but serviceable bio-pic in “Back to Black,” an Amy Winehouse portrait built around a nuanced take on the star and uncanny vocal impersonation by Marisa Abela.

Abela, who was “Teen Talk Barbie” in last summer’s film phenomenon, looks more like Britney Spears (a shortish muscular dancer’s build) but matches Winehouse’s distinct tone and phrasing in song and in her unpolished, working class speech. She vamps up Winehouse’s blowsy personality and lets us see the vulnerability underneath a style icon who brought the “beehive” hairdo back and who transformed on the stage to a confessional, defiant street tough who shamelessly put all her business in her songs.

The film? It leaves a lot to be desired. Matt Greenhalgh’s script doesn’t utterly upend what the Oscar-winning 2015 documentary “Amy” suggested about her life and untimely end. But it does place the blame for her self-destruction at 27 on Winehouse herself, a mercurial personality and addict who never hid that fact, was hounded by the British press for it and paid the ultimate price.

Much respect to documentary filmmaker Asif Kapadia’s reasons for finger pointing at other “villains” in Winehouse’s life. Casting Britain’s best character actor, Eddie Marsan, as her villified father Mitch, pretty much removes the simplistic view of Winehouse’s chief “enabler” narrative and moves him more into a supportive working class dad guise, a character more in the background as she writes her own tragedy. Marsan, like Kapadia, has his reasons.

But “revisionism” aside, Sam Taylor-Johnson’s film frustrates in other ways. Winehouse’s creative process is glimpsed in only a scene or so. We know how she composed “Rehab” and “Back to Black” by “living” them. But they’re introduced abuptly.

We see her transition from singer-songwriter, accompanying herself on guitar, to Billie Holiday of her day, an R-rated, addiction-admitting chanteuse fronting a big band, a singer whose greatest obsession was the addict Blake (Jack O’Connell) she fell for.

She was an alcoholic who boasted about it from the stage before achieving her greatest fame.

“LY-dies don’t SIP,” she cracks onstage at one point. “We GULP.”

And we meet her biggest influence, her ex-jazz singer “nan,” played with heart and great empathy by Lesley Manville.

“You’ve got an eye for ‘bad boys,'” her grandmother scolds. And so she did. Having Amy dismiss the offer of a line of cocaine from the cocky charmer Blake with “Class A drugs are for mugs” seems a reach.

But most of the other characters in Amy’s story — from record execs to managers and bandmates — the enablers of her myopic Camden Town (north London) world, are barely sketched in.

“Back to Black” manages to move us, showing us her triumph and leaning into her unmoored heartbreak at the end of a violent (she was the more violent one, here) marriage. But the biopic skips over much, letting Abela’s wondrous impersonation of Winehouse’s singing and stage presence do the heavy lifting.

There’s joy in these performances, and genuine charm in her “meet cute” with Blake. And the alterations to the accepted narrative of her downfall are challenging and illuminating, if a tad jarring.

But like a lot of musical bio-pics, from maudlin Whitney Houston stories to the overrated Oscar winners “La Vie En Rose” and the much more fun “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the filmmakers limit us to “the greatest hits.” And that’s a far from complete or wholly satisfying immersion in this life and her world.

Rating: R, some violence, drug and alcohol abuse, nudity, sex, smoking

Cast: Marisa Abela, Eddie Marsan, Jack O’Connell and Lesley Manville

Credits: Directed by Sam Taylor-Johnson, scripted by
Matt Greenhalgh. A Focus Features release.

Running time: 2:02

“Good will” is something an actor earns over the course of a long and storied career. It’s what makes a movie star, and what makes movie stars “bankable.”

And it’s the currency such stars spend when what they give their audience isn’t the film they might have hoped it would be.

Alfre Woodard, Diane Keaton, Eugene Levy, Kathy Bates and Dennis Haysbert burn through some of their supply of good will on “Summer Camp,” an all-star comedy with AARP casting appeal and nothing else going for it.

We’ve loved Oscar winners Keaton and Bates, Oscar nominee Woodard, Emmy winner Levy and Golden Globe nominee Haysbert over decades of work. And as painful as this humorless-if-not-quite-heartless Castille Landon film is, we love them no less for signing on to do it.

OK, maybe a little less.

Perhaps writer-director Landon served Irish coffee at the pitch meetings. I don’t know. But this script is as dull as the direction is lifeless. She got her picture made with a winning “name” cast, but judging from the results, that’s the best you can say for her. The players deserved better.

Bates plays a “self-help guru” named Ginny Moon who apparently never got over being slightly older and wiser than the friends she made at Camp Pinnacle in Flat Rock, N.C., fifty years before.

Now she’s rounded up her two besties from those days, research scientist and entrepreneur Nora ( Keaton) and nurse, mother and grandmother Mary (Woodard), piled them into her book-and-lecture tour bus — Ginny’s books are the “Get Your S— Together” “boxed set” — and dragged them back to the place they all met.

The Camp Pinnacle reunion brings them and others their age back to N.C., where presumably they’ll all show how much they’ve matured, or how little they’ve changed.

“The Pretty Committee” of mean girls is still led by Jane (Beverly D.Angelo), with Judy and Evelyn (Maria Howell, Victoria Rowell) still in her posse.

“Whipsmart” camp hunk Stevie D. (Levy) still rolls with hunky Tommy (Haysbert), only now Stevie’s driving a 1960s Austin Healey and retired, and Tommy’s winding down a career as a globe-trotting surgeon.

Nothing and I mean NOTHING is done with the whole “mean girls” thing. The guys are here to present romantic possibilities for a couple of the ladies, and even that earns short shrift.

Bullying Ginny — who changed her name and got famous — micronamanages, criticizes and “fixes” one and all to such a degree that clothes-horse, widowed workaholic Nora and unhappily-married and put-upon Mary can’t make any headway with new flames.

The serious bits work better than the strained and depressing comical ones, and even they don’t entertain or enlighten. Woodard comes off the most “real,” her trademark. Levy is the least funny he’s ever been, thanks to a script his son should have taken a pass at. Describing someone as “still smells like patchoulie and lighter fluid” must be an improvised line, because it’s almost funny.

Bates grates and Keaton shows off her timeless beauty, fashion sense and favorite stunt doubles in a “camp” comedy where archery, river rafting, ziplining and pottery are played for “laughs.”

Nicole Richie is a camp counselor, blink and you’ll miss Arielle Kebbel. I did, but she’s in the closing credits. And Josh Peck is here as an ever-smiling hapless camp counselor who serves up most of the film’s pratfalls. Which aren’t funny.

The opening, featuring colorless voice-over narration by Bates, is tepid but competent. The finale is so abrupt that you’d think an irate studuio exec just shut off the lights. And nothing that comes between changes the sad “bad to worse” trajectory that “Summer Camp” was almost certainly fated to be.

Rating: PG-13, profanity, innuendo

Cast: Diane Keaton, Kathy Bates, Alfre Woodard, Eugene Levy, Dennis Haysbert and Beverly D’Angelo.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Castille Landon. A Roadside Attractions release.

Running time: 1:31