What do you get when you cast Christopher Lloyd and Tom Wilson in and comedy about a teenager with ‘square’ parents who teams up with an unhinged adult/father figure to go on a highly improbable adventure? If you’re thinking Back to the Future, you’re not wrong. But strangely, the same description applies to the lesser known (and indeed lesser in every way) Camp Nowhere. 

Remember a time before YA put children in mortal peril to protect their families? A time when all kids wanted to do was have fun with no parents allowed? Welcome to the 90s and specifically, Camp Nowhere. Four friends and the world’s most irresponsible adult behind Joe Exotic take over an old hippy commune for a summer camp of their own devising. What could possibly go wrong?

Growing up we may not have been as familiar with the prospect of summer camps as viewers in America, but we knew enough to know that they involved forests, flags and the insertion of Native American languages into the camp’s name where possible*. Turns out, camps can also have themes (!) and each of or four young teens has been prescribed a summer spent at camps for their respective social stereotypes, to wit: Computer Camp for Mud, Boot Camp for Zack (Andrew Keegan, who will never not be Joey “Eat Me” Donner), Theatre Camp for Trish and Fat Camp for the in-no-way-even-remotely-overweight Gaby, which, we guess, was the joke (??).

Furthermore, these camps cost about $3,000 a head (closer to $6000 in today’s money) and in the 90s it was perfectly acceptable to pay said sums in cash, which you entrusted to your child. That same child who you deemed too irresponsible to look out for themselves over the school holidays, to the extent that you forked out two months wages to have somebody else supervise them.

It is at this point that we strongly recommend throwing credulity out the window, where it might land on a skateboard, roll down a ramp and perform a perfect mid-air flip before splashing down into the lake. This is childhood wish-fulfilment in the vein of Home Alone or Blank Cheque – it’s ice cream for breakfast and jumping from the roof, it’s painting the walls with Super-Soakers and throwing a cello on the bonfire (the grown-up part of us found this scene particularly shocking), with no rules except one: don’t let the grown-ups find out. This latter point becomes increasingly difficult as Doc Brown Dennis is pursued by Biff a local cop and falls for the doctor who has to treat Mud’s inevitable war-wounds (if you’re having trouble placing the actress Wendy Makkena, picture her in a nun’s habit).

Christopher Lloyd is hilarious as the one-time drama teacher, now serving cheese at the local mall. Who he is and whence he came, we know not, but relax! it’s a kids’ movie. Dennis is mostly an extension of Doc Brown, once again playing a semi-social outcast who works better with children because of a shared dislike of responsibility. His schtick is just shy of creepy (if you discount one oblique reference to a drug-fuelled orgy in the 60s), never offensive, but always well-timed.

The military-style operation for the film’s finale is not quite in the Kevin McAllister league, but we all know that kid was a sociopath. We’re not entirely sure if the kids even learnt a lesson from this, but be sure to stick around to watch Betty get the better of PG-perv Walter.

Watch this film for 96 minutes of 90s nostalgia, then contemplate how many sofa cushions you might need for a viable crash-mat.

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*Still chuckling at Camp Micro-chippewa