“There Ain’t No Cure For The Summertime Blues”-Bill Murray’s “Meatballs” (1979)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Laura Perkins

Meatballs, starring Bill Murray, 1979

This film review of former Saturday Night Live comedian Bill Murray’s Meatballs from 1979 is a case study in what my long-time companion and fellow writer Sam Lowell calls the “slice of life” take. By that he means, I mean, that there is no other way to get the “hook” on which every film review depends, maybe every piece of literature if it came to that, to set the film in its time as a way to look at what society was about, what it allowed and what it missed. The reason for invoking this rationale is that clearly other than some of Murray’s comic antics and no means all of them have withstood the test of time is that neither the so-called story line nor any of the other characters as they were developed offered much reason to see this film again when Greg Green, the site manager here now, asked me to do the film as part of a retrospective on some of the fates of those who started out on SNL way back when.

Bill Murray’s role here is as the max daddy summer camp counselors of all summer camp counselors. A look at that profession circa 1980 in any case when parents did not have to worry as much about leaving their charges with a bunch of mad monks and monkesses if there is such a term for the latter worrying about predators and pedophiles, perverts and punks abusing their own. Of course if looked at from that angle there is no way any responsible parent would let their kids run amok with the crew, led by Murray, who grace this production. Among the counsellors are the usual case of characters that show up in any kid-centered movie. Among the counselors the nerd, the camp Romero, the camp flirt, the camp fat guy,  the chief counsellor (here Morty aka Mickey for some only kid-knowing reason), the tomboy girl, the female nerd if there is a distinction made between the two genders (and of course they never get together since “sames” don’t attract). Among the kids, well among the kids who get short shrift here at the expense of whatever the counselors are doing, mostly young feeling about on sexual matters, is one kid whom Murray takes under his wing, and whom he makes blossom before the end. All of this pretty ho-hum including the obligatory competition against “the camp across the lake” where the upper crust sent their kids. The upshot of the, the human interest side, is that  that kid actually bails the camp out and helps them win-finally- against that other upscale camp.                

Yeah ho-hum is right except these days with #MeToo and a million other such activist social media outlets on the alert I wonder, seriously wonder, whether some of the antics would pass muster, would make it on to the screen today in regard to the treatment of young women and to an extent young men. Now everybody knows, or should know although they act like it is something from a foreign planet that teens are all over the place about sex, interested in what it all about and fearful of what they don’t know or know from sources who many times know less than they do. There is much, maybe too much old-fashioned boy meets girl stuff here but also a lot that seems in 2018 rather intimidating and cruel in what pranks were played, how mostly young women were treated and how young men acted egged on by Murray’s aggressive if playful character. I am willing to admit having said that about the healthy interest in sexual understandings a lot of these antis today might pass to good-humored effect but maybe, just maybe we can no longer be cavalier about what we present on the screen. This is hardly the last word on the subject but since we are looking at this film from the perspective of what youth society looked like then, what was okay and what wasn’t then I don’t think I am being some modern day scold about the matter.