I went to the movies tonight and saw this hysterical indie called “Camp” about a bunch of musical theater misfits at theater camp all summer, and oh god. Where do I even begin? I fucking LOVED this movie. Although I was never a musical theater kid, I know this “community of actors” just as well. We all know these ppl, and this movie was like looking back into the past at my community theater days, my college days, and every open-call for The Donkey Show I’ve ever been to. I’d love to tlak about how tender and real and poignant the movie is, and say that it’s for those reasons that I loved it, but the real truth is that the musical numbers are just the best part of the movie. The cast is all made up of actual real-life musical theater hopefulls (one of them — the lead, straight boy, in fact! — is an old classmate of mine from college) and you can just feel all the energy coming through, that green energy that only bursts from the performances of young musical theater dorks.

Ugh, what a fucking great movie. It’s just campy and cute and really really funny. That little scary girl who poisons the evil diva so she can go onstage in her place? MY fucking HERO! I laughed my ass off, too, at the white girl in the afro wig doing that “And I’m Tell You I’m Not Going” number from the pretty much all-black musical Dreamgirls. The little bitchy gayboy was hysterical too, why didn’t they use MORE of him?. And yes, I cried like bitch not ONCE but TWICE during the movie. The first time was when they were all sitting in that barn singing that down-home, group sing-a-long song about that Factory Plant and they all just got louder and louder and more and more into it — shit, man I lost it. I won’t even front about it. And the other time was when *emotional sigh* the fat girl stands up and sings that incredible “Here’s Who I am” song (mp3) and everyone’s behind her backing her up and her parents are out in the audience finally realizing their daughter for the first time and she’s just belting the shit out of the song and crying. Oh god, I was bawling like a bitch right along with her. We’re talking tears streaming down my face and my lips getting swollen in that way that happens when you REALLY start crying. It was just all kinds of ridiculous, man. I will most definately be rushing my ass out to Tower tomorrow to buy the soundtrack. Hell.

Go see this movie. It’s like Waiting for Guffman for the Gen-Y set. Go. Go now.