A few years back I decided to take a deep dive into the 1984 summer camp comedy Meatballs Part II. I think I might have described it as “the work of someone in the late stages of cocaine-induced psychosis”...but don’t quote me on my own quote. The stuff that goes down in this flick is absolutely bananas: 15 year-old girls make a pact to try to see a penis before summer’s end...Pee Wee Herman is allowed to supervise children...a horse is slaughtered and fed to the campers...a ganja-smoking alien is discovered in the shit house...all over the course of a tidy 88 minutes. Still...I was super tight with this flick and probably watched it a good 150 times back in the day. But when folks would ask what I thought was the superior film in the Meatballs series was (note: no one has ever actually asked me this) I would automatically claim it was the original...even though I only done seen it once or twice. The reason for this is obvious; it stars Bill Murray...the filet of all acting persons alive or dead. It’s also written by Harold Ramis and directed by Ivan Reitman. Throw those three together and you’ve got the holy trinity of 80’s comedy. You’ve got the braintrust behind Ghostbusters! BUT you’ve also got the braintrust behind Ghostbusters 2. The holy trinity, it turns out, is far from infallible. Since it’s currently the dead middle of the bitter winter I decided to go ahead and check out the original Meatballs again and...honestly folks...it makes Meatballs Part II look like The Graduate. It’s at this point in the review where I usually say “what happens is this” and then start cracking wise about the movie plot point by plot point. Problem here is that NOTHING happens in Meatballs. Despite the fact that there are four...FOUR!...people credited as writers on this film there is no plot to speak of. It’s as if they brought some cameras to a summer camp with a bunch of actors with ages ranging from 6 to about 57 and filmed them doing summer camp-y stuff and then edited those scenes together with scenes of Bill Murray doing his Bill Murray ad libbing schtick. And look...I have two words for anyone who doesn’t think Bill Murray is the greatest ad libber of all time. And those words are “gunga...galunga. No wait...gunga...gunga lagunga”. But Meatballs was his first time on the big screen...and it isn’t so much that his chops weren’t there yet...it’s that everything he says is, like, profoundly inappropriate. What (kind of) happens is this: Billy Murray plays Tripper, the head counsellor of the elite Camp North Star. (The movie opens with a song called “Are You Ready for the Summer” by the Camp North Star Kids that deserves an entire article of its own). The campers and C.I.T’s (counsellor’s in training) board busses to camp and here we learn that North Star is so exclusive that there’s a two year waitlist. It also costs $1000 per week...which is like $150k in 2020 money. The reasons for this astronomical fee are never explained. The place looks just like any other shitty old summer camp. Early on, Murray mentions that a guest appearance by Henry Kissinger is built into the admission fee. I’ll confess that I had some alcohol while watching this movie...but I’m fairly positive that the former Secretary of State does not appear. When the kids arrive at camp we are introduced to a who’s who of teen comedy stereotypes. There’s the funny-ish fat dude who looks like he could totally win a hot dog eating contest if that sort of thing happens to come up later in the movie (it does). There’s a dude called Spazz who we have to assume is a spazz ‘cuz he wears a pocket protector and taped up eyeglasses (but looks completely normal otherwise. Handsome even!). There’s a super sad 15 year-old loner kid named Rudy...who is not to be confused with that other kid Rudy from the movie Rudy...even though their story arcs are more or less exactly the same. And for strong female characters we have BAH HAH HAH YEAH RIGHT! Actually, there’s the head girls counsellor Roxanne who seems like she’s going to be a pretty strong character until Bill Murray sexually assaults her (more on that in a sec). Otherwise, a scene in the girl’s bunk in the first 30 minutes maps out this film’s attitude toward women in graphic detail. Basically the ladies sit around in their undies and talk about their periods and ask their counsellors if you can get pregnant without having actual intercourse. I mean...most of the movies I watched growing up in the early 80’s taught me that when girls are left alone they remove their bras and have pillow fights. Nice to have a different perspective, I guess. Thank you, Meatballs. So I don’t know...a bunch of scenes pass by willy nilly: people swim and fool around and talk about going on panty raids. Rudy decides he’s had enough of this noise so he escapes to the local bus station to catch the first ‘Pan back to anywhere but here. Bill Murray tracks him down and buys him french fries and convinces him to give camp another try. Murray promises Rudy that, if anyone messes with him, he will simply stab them in the neck with a swiss army knife. Man, the shit you could get away with in a PG-rated flick in 1979! So now there’s half a plot--depresso Rudy and supercool Tripper? They pals!

Back at camp Bill Murray and Roxanne are hanging out in the camp office when he mentions that he can see down her shirt. She tells him to piss off. He proceeds to pick her up and drag her to the couch where he then flips her over and bites her on the ass while she screams for help. OK!!....YEAH!!!....so obviously there’s a word for that...and that word rhymes with rape. I like to try to keep things light here at VHSOTW...and I might be willing to give this scene a pass...but then VHS jacket for this movie specifically mentions this scene as if it’s a motherfucking SELLING POINT! I quoth--” The wildest summer Camp North Star ever had begins with.....Tripper’s amorous attack on a female counselor.” Amorous attack!??? Sweet christ in heaven and all 12 of the apostles! They can’t even mention the lady character’s name!? Anyway...we will watch the rest of the movie not because it is easy...but because it is hard* (*JFK). Bill Murray and Rudy start going for super long early morning runs together...which I’m sure is going to come up again later on (note: it does). Meanwhile there’s a consistently unfunny gag that involves the counsellors kidnapping the long-suffering camp director Morty and launching him out into the middle of the lake while still asleep in his bunk bed. This is particularly problematic as it happens in the middle of Parent’s Week! DOH! And hey listen...I spent every summer from age 8 to 15 at summer camp. I’m pretty sure my parents...like most parents...sent me off to camp so they could have sweaty, uninterrupted kitchen floor sex all day and night. Summer ain’t but 6 weeks long. My parents wouldn’t have come to visit me if I was caught in a bear trap. I call bullshit on these scenes.

Even though, by my count, we’re only about 4 days into the summer...they tell us that summer is almost over. We nod. All of the camp counsellors board canoes for a night out on the lake. There’s a tender scene between a couple who seal their 3rd anniversary with a kiss and WHOOOO the fuck are these characters again?? Seriously...I thought The Godfather Part 2 was tough to follow! They all head out to an island or whatever and pound booze. Bill Murray and his rape victim dance tenderly and suck face and oh I just give up. I really do. OH! Bill Murray also tells this scary ass story about a couple being murdered by a deranged psychopath with a rusty hook for a hand. If this movie was just this one scene it would have been the scariest movies of the 70’s...and yes I have seen Halloween and The Exorcist Maybe there’s 5-minute director’s cut in the works? Who’s to say...

The counsellors all row back to the camp after their night on the island (who was watching the campers while all of this was going on? we do not know). There’s a sweet song that plays over this scene that I coulda swore was Randy Newman ‘cuz it’s all “dee boo daah boo..dee bee dee doo” but it’s actually Terry Black...or David Naughton...or ahh who gives a shit? When they arrive back at camp they must have figured...well...shit..we need to end this movie some which way! How does an epic battle royale with the vaguely racistly named rival Camp Mohawk sound?? It sounds ridiculous! Remember the scene in Wet Hot American Summer where Coop is trying to get his campers riled up for a baseball game against the l camp Tiger Claw and his campers tell him that they don’t want to play because it’s a total cliche...and “well worn territory”? They are 100% referring to the last 30 minutes of Meatballs.

The dudes from Camp Mohawk arrive at Camp North Star for a competition that involves everything from potato sack racing to hot dog eating (told you) and pugilism. It’s tough to know who to root for as there zero actual characters from the Camp Mohawk side. There’s also no mention as to what’s at stake in this competition. I mean...winner gets what? A set of steak knives? Also--it seems that only the counsellors get to take part in the competition. It’s as if the campers have disappeared from the film entirely. But that’s cool I guess. Funny Fat Kid wins the hot dog eating contest. Spazz wins the stacked teacup contest (huh?). Bill Murray keeps running around in the background saying shit like “I run to keep my mind off of sex” and “I’m pacing like an expectant father with the clap.” Mmm Hmm. Halfway through the competition North Star is trailing by like a grillion points. This is par for the course as Mohawk has won 12 out of the last 12 competition. The entire camp gathers for a late night fireside pep rally where Bill Murray says that Mohawk always wins because their kids have “all the money”. Umm...excuse me but isn’t this the camp that costs ONE LARGE per week in 1979 dollars?? Could there really be another camp that costs more?? You know what? It just doesn’t matter. Those aren’t my words...that’s Billy Murray telling his trailing-in-the-standings summer camp that they needn’t worry about winning the faceless nameless competition. The entire cast get onboard chanting up a storm: “IT JUST DOESN’T MATTER!!” I mean...why would it matter?? No one even knows what you win if you win this stupid fucking shit! But yeah...turns out it does matter. Camp North Star can win it all (whatever “all” is) if they win the big cross country race. And who better to run the race than poor sad Rudy. I’m sure winning that shit would turn his frown right the fuck upside down. So...yeah...that’s exactly what happens. Rudy runs the race and wins by a nut hair. He is hailed as a hero and vows to return to camp the following summer to crush as much ass as possible (I’m not just being crass...this is the actual plot of the R-rated Meatballs 3 starring none other than PATRICK DEMPSEY as Rudy!) Bill Murray and his assault victim agree to get an apartment together...so there’s that. The movie ends with the entire cast gathered around the campfire singing a song about CIT life that includes the lyrics “we smoke and drink and fool around...we’re CIT’s...so pity us.” I immediately eject the VHS tape and throw it in the trash. But then I remember that I still own Meatballs Part II. So I got that going for me....which is nice....