Camp

At the film's uplifting conclusion, when a stilled voice finally makes itself heard, you can unmistakably feel your heart lift, as if it had grown tiny wings. Camp reminds you that once you believed it would always soar, just like that.

It's impossible not to be exhilarated by the energy and determination that infuses every frame.

"Meatballs" handled the sleep-away sex stuff better; here it feels like filler between the killer musical numbers that make even special guest Stephen Sondheim smile on his way out the door.

The situations are mighty broad, but exuberance counts for something in the movie with perhaps the year's most double-edged title.

Art as a passport to healing may be what audiences are craving these days, but the poultice provided by this movie couldn't cover a paper cut.

Has a good deal of the appeal, and the drawbacks, of a high school play. It can be pokey and overly earnest and its dramatics are not always polished, but, on the other hand, would you want them to be?

Camp has also been compared to Alan Parker’s "Fame," which operates with a similar love of behind-the-scenes melodrama and youthful idealism, but different in that it doesn’t induce brain-swelling revulsion in the viewer.