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Star cast: Sonali Kulkarni, Rakesh Bedi, Sanjay Mishra, Krishna Bhatt and a host of children.
Plot: A picnic organised by Sonali with little children goes haywire when one of the kids is kidnapped by Sanjay Mishra and Krishna Bhatt. Are the group of children, instructors and driver succeesful in saving the kidnapped child?
What’s Good: Nothing.
What’s Bad: The childish story and equally kiddish screenplay; the performances of the actors.
Verdict: The Camp will fail to camp itself in the theatres for long. Disaster.
Loo break: Plenty because the drama is so insipid that you can go to the loo a hundred times and yet not miss much.
Aayush Cine Vision and Madhu Entertainment & Media Ltd.’s The Camp is a childish film about how a group of school-going children rescue their friend from kidnappers. They are guided and helped in this difficult task by their instructors and bus driver.
A group of excited kids sets out on a fun-filled adventure camp to a jungle with their camp instructor, Sonali Mansingh (Sonali Kulkarni), co-instructor, Bhagwan (Pradhan Devri), and bus driver, Jarnail Singh (Rakesh Bedi). They are being followed by a duo, Sanjay (Sanjay Mishra) and Chaman (Krishna Bhatt), on a motorbike. The duo wants to kidnap one of the kids, Neil (Shreyas Paranjape), so that it can blackmail his rich father to pay a huge ransom in exchange for the release of the boy. Sonali Mansingh, however, takes it upon herself to follow the kidnappers who, incidentally, have abandoned their motorcycle and are trying to flee the jungle.
What obstacles the kids face in their daunting and dangerous task and how they surmount them is what the film is all about.
Nitin Mahadar’s story is so childish that it is not funny. Rohit Gahlowt’s screenplay is not a shade better than the story. Why the kidnappers abandon their motorcycle and, instead, walk when they are in a tearing hurry to escape is not explained. Similarly, why they don’t contact the kidnapped boy’s father for ransom, for a long time after the kidnapping is not clear. Again, the way in which Sonali Mansingh delegates work is not at all sensible. For instance, she sends kids with the bus driver to fetch the police. It is not clear why the driver couldn’t go alone to complain to the police and why the kids asked to accompany him couldn’t instead simply stay at the camp. Even in normal circumstances, the things the group does and the way in which it does what it does are all so silly that it makes the audience wonder which era the kids and their instructors belong to. In other words, the story line is so thin that the screenplay has been stretched aimlessly and without direction. Comedy is feeble. Dialogues (Rohit Gahlowt) are routine.
Sonali Kulkarni tries to play a cool camp instructor but succeeds only partially. Rakesh Bedi is quite irritating and at sea most of the times, thanks to his characterisation. Sanjay Mishra is not half as funny as he usually is. As his sidekick, Krishna Bhatt also tries to evoke laughter but to virtually no avail. Almost all the kids come up with mostly uninspired performances.
Nitin Mahadar’s direction is dull and won’t impress even the kids who are the target audience for this kind of cinema. Music (Uday Ramdas and Shivendra Mohan) is functional. Aniket Khandagale’s cinematography is routine. Action scenes are ordinary.
On the whole, The Camp is a kiddish fare which even the kids will not find worthwhile. Flop.
