Summer Camp

A trio of legendry actresses are wasted in this generic, by-the-numbers comedic romp as childhood friends go back to camp and find adolescent problems still trail them.

Look, not every film can or should be high art. Sometimes we just want to be entertained, to watch something inconsequential to take our minds off our troubles for awhile. Many movies are made to do just that — and I have no problem with it.

But flicks like “Summer Camp” irk not because they’re lightweight, but because they don’t do a very good job of what they’re supposed to. Even moreso because it features a trio of legendary actresses: Kathy Bates, Alfre Woodard and Diane Keaton.

All are so good — two Oscar winners and a nominee — they personify the old saw of, “I’d pay to watch them read the phone book.” That still holds true, but in this case I think I might choose the phone book.

Woodard, Bates and Keaton play Mary, Ginny and Nora, respectively, three 65ish gals who met at Camp Pinnacle as preteens and have kept that bond going more than half a century later, even as life has taken them each on very different twists and turns. Their friendship has started to drift in recent years as is so often the case with age, marriage, careers, etc.

Ginny, who traded in the name Moscowitz for the more marketable Moon, has become a famous self-help guru whose tagline is, “Get Your Sh*t Together.” She arranges a camp reunion for her pals from the old Sassafras cabin to re-bond, along with all their peers from back in the day, with her keynote speech as the centerpiece.

Ginny is very much about always occupying center stage.

Mary, who was the wallflower of the group as kids, has become an ER nurse who is pushed and pulled in a thousand directions all the time, not least by her husband, Mike (Tom Wright), who’s one of those guys that believes a wife’s role is to always be at his beck and call, with little support flowing in the other direction.

Nora’s husband died 15 years ago and she has thrown herself into the workaholic life as the CEO of a biotech company, Oreluma, specializing in keeping things clean and sterile. It’s a good metaphor for her own life, always choosing the safe and orderly way, and not surprisingly Ginny and Mary have to practically kidnap her to get her to come along.

(Keaton is somehow still dressing like Annie Hall, with her own clothing line to push.)

The reunion starts out as an agreeable affair with mostly affable oldsters, excepting the Pretty Committee, the women’s nemeses from the old days, led by Beverly D’Angelo as chief mean girl Jane.

Nicole Ritchie plays the even-keeled camp director, and Betsy Sodaro is a hoot as Vick, the extremely always enthusiastic sidekick who thinks campers should be subjected to strip searches to ensure they’re giving up all their electronics as instructed. It’s basically a straight lift of Chris Farley’s shtick, but it works. Jimmy (Josh Peck) is the outgoing but serially incompetent camp counselor constantly changing jobs.

Love enters the air with the presence of Tommy and Stevie D., played by Dennis Haysbert and Eugene Levy, two old flames from camp now nicely creased and available. Mary and Nora play hard to get, but not very hard. As for Ginny, she’s largely put her personal life on hold to become “Ginny Moon,” and unapologetically so, but has all the more reason to push reconnection with her two camp chums.

Writer/director Castille Landon approaches the material like television… and not primetime network shows but the extremely formulaic stuff you see on Nickelodeon and the Disney Junior channel. Nothing happens that you can’t see coming way off, and the comedy set pieces are based on predictable stuff like food fights, a white river rafting trip that goes awry, etc.

Mary gets to rediscover her love of horse riding, and not wearing a saddle of her own for Mike all the time. Nora commiserates with Stevie about his own over-devotion to work and what that’s cost him. Ginny realizes she’s spent so much of her life telling people how to fix their own, the person most in need of advice is herself.

“Real eyes,” she intones with a practiced tone, pointing at her peepers. “Realize.” (Head.) “Real lies.” (Mouth.)

I love seeing these three grand dames on the screen together. I wish I could have watched them doing almost anything else besides traipsing through this by-the-numbers romp.