7MMO
Moderator
Tiny Fugitives is in theaters on September 18.
Is there anything sadder than a kid sitting alone in the school cafeteria?
That, in essence, is what Tiny Fugitives is about, the latest comedy that features Johnny Knoxville, but in actual fact is about a group of twelve-year-olds who decide that summer sleepaway camp is where they want to live for the rest of their days, because their regular lives just aren’t cutting it. Unfortunately, as heartwarming and good-natured as the film can be at times, it also suffers from a bit of an identity crisis, never really finding the balance between its dick jokes, Knoxville-as-human-target shenanigans, and more soft and gentle leanings.
The film opens with Jacob (Benjamin Pajak) at the front of his classroom, charming his fellow students as he convinces them of the magic of camp. “Fuck school!” his teacher finally yells, completely sold on his pitch. “Let’s go to camp!” The class erupts in cheers…
Except it’s all been a daydream, and in fact Jacob is the kid who has no friends, gets picked on by the class bully, and yep, eats alone in the cafeteria. And that’s why camp is so important to him, since it’s those two months of each year where he gets to really live. It’s “10 for 2,” as he and his best friend at camp, Charness (Aaron Harris), call it – 10 months of the regular year for the two months at camp. The best of times.
And really, some of the stuff these kids are dealing with does help to paint a picture of why they don’t love it back home. Charness not only doesn’t have friends either, but he claims that his parents are starting to hate him. Jacob’s folks, meanwhile, are on the verge of divorce, and generally the two boys are miserable when not at camp. So when Jacob learns that his parents might not be sending him back next summer, he and Charness devise a plan to run away to “Old Camp,” the original site of their camp where “over the pants handjobs were literally invented.” OTPHJs!
Tiny Fugitives either doesn’t know what it wants to be, or there’s not enough of it there to be just one thing.
Cute, right? And so the kids escape, with Knoxville’s over-the-hill (well, he’s 50 in the movie) camp counselor Bob soon embarking on the hunt to find them. From there, a series of setpieces involving the hijinks the kids get into – including Isa Bernal Steiner's Tali, Jai Soundar's Leon, and Alyssa Gervasi's Sophie – are intermixed with the Jackass star’s Looney Tunes-style buffoonery as each attempt to capture the kids results in him getting electrocuted, thrown from fast-moving vehicles, etc.
And really, that’s part of the problem with Tiny Fugitives. It either doesn’t know what it wants to be, or there’s not enough of it there to be just one thing. The kids having crushes on each other and learning life lessons stuff can be genuinely sweet – Leon and Sophie get mock-married at one point, with Sophie later having to break it to Leon that things aren’t going to work out since “you’re 10” – but then all of a sudden here’s Knoxville’s Bob, pursuing the gang like some kind of fannypack-wearing T-1000. It’s jarring.
(One also can’t help but notice how much Knoxville isn’t in the movie. Yes, he’s the name to get people in theater seats, and Tiny Fugitives is really about the kids in the end, but I was surprised by how few sequences actually lean into the cartoonish “hurt Bob” scenario the film seems to promise.)
Co-written and directed by Michael Lewen, Tiny Fugitives calls back to a type of movie of old that we perhaps don’t see enough of these days. Meatballs is the easy comparison, but it’s not just the summer camp aspect that I’m talking about. There’s a low-stakes, low-yield, “hey, that was fun and I’ll never think about this movie again” feel to the picture that is kind of rare in our go-big-or-go-home times. But it’s also hampered by the type of problems that a movie like that would’ve also been in danger of suffering from back in the day, namely an undercooked script, under-directed performances, and illogical character turns.
It’s a shame though, because there’s a heart beating beneath the surface of this little movie that is just waiting to come bursting to the surface. It’s like that kid sitting at the lunch table all alone – if someone would just give them a chance, they have so much potential.
Continue reading...
