A wayward teenager is sent to a Christian camp in this Netflix musical.
Every summer, the Christian teens of Roman White’s hokey musical “A Week Away,” streaming on Netflix, head to Camp Aweegaway for genteel flirting, Amy Grant ballads and the Warrior Games, a multiday olympiad of tug of war, dodge ball, and hula-hooping, capped by a talent show. But this year, the high jinks are disrupted by an orphan named Will (Kevin Quinn) — a cuddly car thief with a felonious addiction to hair gel — who seeks redemption in the chaste embrace of the camp owner’s daughter Avery (Bailee Madison). As his crush, along with his geeky bunkmate (a delightful Jahbril Cook), work to save the hip outsider’s soul, Will helps the two take down the Warrior Games’ incumbent victor Sean (Iain Tucker), who seems to be a villain mostly because the script is desperate for a spritz of conflict. (Sean’s other passions include rapping and saving the narwhals.)
This is a film as tidy, transparent and kid-friendly as a square of Jell-O salad, and so squishily eager-to-please that it doesn’t engage with its religious themes so much as tuck them into song lyrics to hover in the narrative like grapes. Earlier generations of camp flick fans may be startled to see swimming scenes — historically an excuse for close-ups of bikinis and abs — here modestly clothed in unisex wet T-shirts and shorts. Only when “A Week Away” pokes fun at its own innocence does it land a big laugh. Overseeing the war games, the camp owner, played by the comedian David Koechner, struts out costumed as Lt. Colonel Kilgore from “Apocalypse Now” to advise the paintball fighters to watch their six. At this, the youth leader Kristin (Sherri Shepherd) panics. “Not your 666!” she yelps. “I don’t even know what ‘Apocalypse Now’ is.”
A Week Away
Not rated. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. Watch on Netflix.
Source: Movies - nytimes.com
