| Boot Camp is a teen romantic comedy about a chubby girl who attends a fitness and wellness retreat and falls in love with her trainer. It’s cheesy and predictable, and sweet and funny and hits a lot of the right notes. The beginning can be frustrating to get through because there are so many unrealistic aspects that you just have to accept, but then it settles down into a cute and lovely romance between two adorable characters. | | 2024
Directed by: Mackenzie Munro
Screenplay by: Gemma Holdway, Gina Musa
Starring: Rachel Boudwin, Drew Ray Tanner
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Whitney (Rachel Boudwin) is the unpopular fat girl who excels at school but not much else. Against her better judgement, her crush and next door neighbour convince her to attend prom where the prom queen bitch Willow (Rachel Boyd) promptly humiliates her. And with that, she signs herself up for a summer long boot camp. This is not exactly an inspiring movie because this boot camp is not real.
There are around a dozen campers all of whom are there for different reasons. A couple want to lose weight and get in shape like Whitney but others are there to train for the Olympics, or learn how to meditate. And the campers all participate in the same training programs together. As if what is helpful to future Olympians is also helpful to non-athletic out-of-shape kids. That type of nonsense is there to greet you at the beginning of the movie.
Things get significantly more enjoyable once Whitney meets and gets to know Axel (Drew Ray Tanner), her fitness trainer. A few things that make this middle part of the movie click is that Whitney and Axel both admit to their feelings for each other by the half-way mark of the movie. There is no tip-toe-ing around the fact that this is a rom-com. The film owns up to its predictability right off the bat and then allows time for the characters to really connect. Both Whitney and Axel are fully-rounded characters who have real conversations with one another.
Axel has an ex-girlfriend, also a counsellor at the camp, and Whitney still has those pesky self-esteem issues that they have to get over first, as well as the fact that counsellors aren’t supposed to date campers; the little bit of a back-and-forth dance that they have to do around each other is genuinely cute and funny.
The film becomes less enjoyable when it gets into the personal growth messages. The boot camp actually helps Whitney learn to face her fears and stand up for herself, and she also miraculously gains upper body strength in one afternoon session. There really could have been a nice inspiring part to this movie but it decided to go for nonsense instead. The lack of realism hurts it, but the romance shines through.
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