Meatballs (1979)

 

Off-List: Meatballs

The second off-List movie of 1979 is “Meatballs”. This Canadian comedy I never heard of before, but listen to this: It is directed by Ivan Reitman, written by Harold Ramis (and a few other people) and stars Bill Murray in his first leading role. When I realized this movie existed, I simply had to watch it.

Tripper (Bill Murray) is part of a team (CITs, counsellors-in-training) running a summer camp out in the Canadian forests. The camp is called the North Star camp, is headed by Morty (Harvey Atkin) who everybody insist on calling Mickey and it is in competition with the high-end summer camp Mohawk on the other side of the lake. Tripper is, to the surprise of nobody, an anarchistic goofball who is taking nothing serious, but with his heart in the right place. Curiously the same character Murray has been in almost all his movies.

We follow the camp from preparations to receive the children, through the various events of a summer camp, until the camp shuts down at the end of summer. The action is what happens at all these events. Spaz (Jack Blum) and Fink (Keith Knight), the geek and the chubby guy are constantly the butt of any joke as they, mostly failing, explores the other sex. Tripper notices depressed child Rudy (Chris Makepeace) and take him under his wing in typical Murray style, between running practical jokes on Morty and mock-desperately wooing Roxanne (Kate Lynch). The climax of the movie is the Olympiad against rival camp Mohawk, an event North Star has lost the past 12 years, but the CITs are a crafty bunch, so maybe this time it will be different.

This is not a movie with any big drama or deep crisis, just a string of fun events, bookended by the start and end of summer, so everything stands and falls with this string being sufficiently entertaining. This is very early Ramis and Reitman and neither has at this point come entirely into their own, but the outline is there, all the elements that would make them famous. Many of the following movies, “Caddyshack”, Stripes”, even “Ghostbuster” follow up on ideas from “Meatballs”. I thought they did okay here, but what really saves it is Bill Murray. Though he may also be the problem of the movie. He vastly outshines everybody else to the extent that in hindsight this is basically a vehicle for him to do his schtick. If you like Bill Murray, there is a lot to love here and fortunately for me, I do. Even mediocre jokes or situations that were not even intended to be funny, becomes so in his hands. It is entirely over the top, but also awesome.

One thing that did bother me, watching “Meatballs” is that a summer camp like this is all about giving the children a great experience and the function of the staff is to facilitate this. In “Meatballs” however, the children are hardly there. The interaction is mainly between the CITs, their interests are mainly the other CITs, the party is a CIT only party and they even have a CIT only over-night’er. I understand this is just a silly comedy and the summer camp is just a setting for the shenanigans, but I cannot help feeling that there is very little interest in the people for whom this summer camp is actually for, both from the CITs and the movie scriptwriters. If it had not been for the Rudy story, they could have been taking care of hamsters and it would have been the same movie.

This supports the impression that “Meatballs” is a movie that is halfway there. It has a lot of good ideas, interesting premises, but has not entirely been cooked through. There is enough here to make it an entertaining movie, but not enough to make it a classic. Still, you cannot be a Ramis/Reitman/Murray fan without having this one under the belt.

I think my son will like it…