Though bolstered by a talented and appealing cast — and lovingly shot on location at an actual summer camp in Canada's Algonquin Provincial Park — "Indian Summer" is little more than just another dumb camp comedy with thirty-something instead of teenage "kids."
It's also a blatant ripoff of "The Big Chill," right down to plot points and characters, "The Big Chill Goes to Summer Camp," if you will, with seven friends and one younger companion gathering together for a reunion at the place where they spent their summers as kids.
Ridiculously sentimental and every bit as sophomoric as (if a bit more restrained than) the teen camp comedies that dominated the early '80s, "Indian Summer" has Unca Lou (Alan Arkin, wonderfully dry, as always) putting out a call to those who were residents during the camp's "golden age" to return for a week before he retires and shuts it down.
The opening moments show them preparing for the trip:
— Diane Lane, the young widow whose husband was also a summer camp alumnus.
— Matt Craven, as the womanizer who brings along his latest 21-year-old chickie.
— Kimberly Williams as the chickie, who will realize what a pig Craven is and gain the respect of the rest of the gang.
— Bill Paxton as the loner no one has heard from since he was kicked out of camp as a kid, and who comes to make amends for something that involves Unca Lou.
— Vincent Spano and Julie Warner as a couple whose marriage has hit a few rocks and isn't helped by Spano's apparent wandering eye.
— Kevin Pollak as Spano's cousin, a workaholic and the victim of everyone else's practical jokes.
— Elizabeth Perkins as the wisecracking single woman of the bunch who wishes she hadn't let Spano get away.
Then there's Sam Raimi, as the camp maintenance man, a silent goofball who provides some amusing, nicely choreographed slapstick pantomimes.
There are some amusing bits here but not enough to make the movie rise above its mediocre elements. Still, Pollak and Perkins provide a few laughs. And Arkin and Raimi, who is a director of weird horror films ("Darkman," "Army of Darkness"), are really wonderful. Too bad they aren't in more of the movie.
"Indian Summer" is rated PG-13 for violence, profanity, vulgarity, sex, brief nudity, drugs.