Meatballs1979
Meatballs (1979)
TOMATOMETER
AUDIENCE SCORE
Critic Consensus: Meatballs is a summer camp comedy with few surprises, but Bill Murray's riffing adds a spark that sets it apart from numerous subpar entries in a frequently uninspired genre.
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Movie Info
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Cast
as Tripper
as Morty
as Roxanne
as Crockett
as Lance
as Spaz
as Hardware
as A.L.
as Brenda
as Wendy
as Wheels
as Fink
as Jackie
as Ace
as Carla
as Liza
as Rhino
as Andrew
as Bradley
as Jeffrey
as Peter DeWitt
as Rudy
as Horse
as Patti
as Jodi
as Candace
as Eddy
as Phil
as Interviewer
News & Interviews for Meatballs
Critic Reviews for Meatballs
All Critics (36) | Top Critics (6) | Fresh (26) | Rotten (10) | DVD (6)
If one or two fall flat, so what. The next probably will hit your funnybone.
Through it all, Murray smiles and forges ahead, but his big riffs have been edited down to frantic bursts of mugging.
It's difficult to come up with a more cliche situation for a summer pic than a summer camp, where all the characters and plot turns are readily imaginable. That makes director Ivan Reitman's accomplishment all the more noteworthy.
Camp counsellor Tripper (Murray) is a John Belushi clone whose 'charisma' dominates the film's standard wackiness and sentimental story (of a kid who doesn't fit).
A cheerful, if not particularly deft, summer-camp comedy.
...while Meatballs is not a very good movie, you still kind of wish you could have gone to Camp North Star as a camper.
Audience Reviews for Meatballs
With a tip of the hat to Robert Altman's M.A.S.H,, we join 'the other guys'(who are not rich, or privileged, or anything like that) kids at summer camp as they learn important life lessons like 'we ARE just as good as the rich and privileged kids' and 'we may not have masseuses or chauffeurs but we still know how to have fun'. Bill Murray struggles under the onus of being this camp's Hawkeye Pierce, needing to be 'wacky' in nearly every scene. I smiled once, I think, catching sight of a cochroach leaving the theater.
Super Reviewer
The first of a long line of collaborations between Harold Ramis and Bill Murray, this is the original film that started the camp genre that jettisoned through the eighties. Murray plays a goofy authoritarian figure who understands the kids, but works against the administration. The camp counselors are over-sexed teenagers, and their charges are big eyed sweethearts like newcomer Chris Makepeace. The film is a very watered down kind of comedy that relies on the goofball antics of Murray and the charisma of bikini babes. The film is very sweet when dealing with the relationship between Murray and Makepeace, but otherwise the counselors seem to see their charges as annoyances. There are also relationships between the teenagers, which is where the teenage sexual fantasy aspect comes from. It's a pretty harmless, sweet comedy that has lingered in the collective consciousness for the pure reason that it's Murray at his peak goofiness.
Super Reviewer
[img]http://images.rottentomatoes.com/images/user/icons/icon14.gif[/img] Meatballs is by no means, an Ivan Reitman/Bill Murray classic. However, it has got quite a few funny moments and an energetic Murray leading the camp. The best thing about it though, was that I had a smile on my face that never faded away when I was watching it.
Super Reviewer
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