Is it me? I don't remember it smelling this much like urine...

As summer winds down and the kids go back to school, it leaves us adults watching those back-to-school commercials with just a hint of nostalgia. While none of us were ever big fans of our summer being over, having to get back in the swing of going to bed early, getting up in the mornings, and having teachers seat us in alphabetical order, there was always a bit of magic about getting to pick out your lunch box for the year and deciding which supercool notebook would hold all of your Blue Horse notebook paper. Not so cool was the having to spend what felt like eternity in clothing stores, trying on new clothing at always seemed to itch, and being lectured on how you had to take care of that new pair of sneakers because “shoes don’t grow on trees.”

Even as a kid, I never understood the logic of that statement. I mean, hell, I knew that shoes didn’t grow on trees, they were made of rubber and cloth and had Chuck Taylor All-Star circles over the ankle bone. Imagine my delight, years later, when I found out there WAS such a thing as a “shoe tree,” and said as much when my mother broke out the quote again. I remember distinctly piping up with, “If shoes don’t grow on trees, what is a shoe tree, then?”

I don’t remember much after that, of course, but still…

Something else adults think back on is summer camps. Not the “one week and done” camps like we have today, but those summer camps where they picked you up in a bus on the last day of school, and you stayed gone for two months. Pretty sure those camps were thought of as “summer vacation for parents,” but…

One of my favorite “nobody has ever seen this” movies is about such a camp. It’s called Indian Summer.

Comedian Mike Binder wrote and directed this story, based on his own memories of summer camp. The story concerns a group of alumni from Camp Tamakwa. The camp owner, “Unca” Lou Handler (Alan Arkin), has decided to close the camp because attendance has dropped. Kids are more focused on sports camps, modeling camps, weight-loss camps, and the like, rather than learning about the outdoors, the environment, the wildlife, the things that have made Camp Tamakwa what it was for over thirty-five years. Lou has invited a group of his favorite campers back for one last week before he puts the locks on one last time.

The group has grown up, though, from their days as campers. Brothers Brad and Matthew Berman (Kevin Pollak and Vincent Spano) run a designer cap company. Matthew is married to Kelly (Julie Warner), whom he met at camp. Jennifer Morton (Elizabeth Perkins) is a successful attorney. Beth Warden (Diane Lane) is a widow, grieving the recent death of her husband, who was also a camper. Jamie Ross (Matt Craven) is a dot-com rich boy going through a mid-life crisis, including a barely-into-her-twenties fiancée (Kimberly Williams-Paisley). And Jack Belston (Bill Paxton, from our last movie) is a tree-hugging hippee who was kicked out of camp long ago for reasons that are still a little painful for everyone to remember.

The group comes back to Camp Tamakwa for the last week of camp, to remember their “good old days,” catch up on each others’ lives, and to possibly rekindle an old flame or two in the process. And, really, folks, that’s what this movie is. It’s about a group of grown-ups, called together by a man who was a father figure to them all, to remember their pasts, and possibly restore their present. Work tensions, marriage tensions, life tensions, Unca Lou has kept up with all of his “kids,” and perhaps hopes that Camp Tamakwa can work its magic one last time.

This is such a great film, folks. You almost feel like you are sitting in one of the cabins, listening to the remembrances, so much so you will find yourself having stories just like the alums pop into your head as you watch. Lou has the reunion scheduled just as he did when regular campers came in. He has them pass a swimming test before they can take the canoes out. He has a “Tamakwa-thon” scheduled, a ten-event sporting contest that happened every year. He has hikes planned, he has a dance planned. He even wakes them every morning, bright and early at 6 AM, by ringing the camp bell, something the alums do NOT enjoy remembering. And, of course, the alums have their own events – raiding the camp kitchen after a pot party, playing practical jokes (what they call “shrecks,” long before the word became associated with a big green Scottish ogre) on one another, everything you would expect from campers. And, of course, Unca Lou finds the time to offer his wisdom and advice as situations arise.

It’s usually around here when I talk about the supporting cast, but, honestly, there is only one other character in the movie, a wonderful dunce of a man named Stick Coder. Stick’s father was the lovable dunce back in the day, and Stick has taken up the mantle in the waning years of the camp. Stick is played by The Evil Dead’s Sam Raimi, who happened to grow up with Indian Summer writer-director Mike Binder, and Raimi is purely a gem to watch. If you have seen Raimi’s movies, especially Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn and Army of Darkness, you know Raimi has a penchant for goofy slapstick humor, even though he is primarily known as a horror director. Well, here, Raimi is pure slapstick comedy relief, and he makes the most of every second he is onscreen.

It would have been very easy to let a movie like this slip into mushy sentimentalism, one of those made-for-Lifetime or Hallmark movies that just makes you want to lay on the sofa and pray for the commercial breaks so you can maniacally flip through the channels to find ANYTHING else to watch. But Binder-as-director has all of his ducks in a row here. There are, of course, the flashbacks to the alumni when they were kids, and we see their tears, their embarrassing moments, but Binder-as-writer has kept the script tight enough to allow these moments to happen for exposition, then bracketed the scenes with some comedy or a nice segue, and they fit right in. It’s very obvious that Binder holds his memories dear to him – the movie is actually filmed at the real Camp Tamakwa, the camp Binder (and Sam Raimi) attended for ten years as kids. The character of "Unca Lou Handler" is based on the real man, Unca Lou Handler, who founded and ran the camp. In fact, the multi-color sweater that Arkin wears as “Unca Lou” actually belonged to the real Unca Lou. Binder wanted everything in this movie to be as close to his memories as it could be. Here, give Tamakwa a look as it is today...

http://tamakwa.com/

This is one of the rare times when an ensemble cast works as just that – a well-blended ensemble. When the movie was originally released, the trade papers compared it to other true ensemble movies like The Big Chill and The Return of the Secaucus Seven. While Indian Summer did not achieve the box-office or status of these films, it did earn quite a resurgence once it hit home video and pay-tv markets, enough so that it has become a staple at midnight movies and retro-movie palaces now.

Take a two-hour break from the hectic world, and relive your childhood through the campers in Indian Summer. You will enjoy yourself, and, maybe, just maybe, you will find some of that little kid inside you that our insane world tends to bury. I’d be willing to bet you that, once you meet that kid again, you won’t be so eager to let him or her get buried so fast again…