Woody Woodpecker Goes to Camp (2024) – Review

In 2017 Universal released its first live-action Woody Woodpecker movie to a less than stellar reception, garnering a 13% critic rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but because it finished second in the Brazilian box office – where Woody Woodpecker is insanely popular for reason – we are punished with this sequel.

Other than then featuring the title character there is no connection between this film and the previous live-action Woody Woodpecker movie so it’s best to consider this a standalone entry. Of course, I’d say it’s best to consider watching something else as this “sequel” is just another collection of tired kids’ movie clichés that were already old back in the 1980s. The plot of this movie deals with Woody Woodpecker (Eric Bauza) getting kicked out of the forest by Forest Ranger Walters (Patrick Williams) because all the other animals are sick of his crazy shenanigans – don’t ask me how you a bird can be kicked out of a forest – and the ranger tells him “You need to learn what it means to be part of a team. Until you learn what it means to be a team player, you’re no longer welcome here.” And with that piece of tough love, Woody is forced out into the wild…oh wait, isn’t that where he lives normally?

“We thought about having an intervention but you’re not worth it.”

His quest is short-lived as he almost immediately stumbles upon Camp Woo Hoo, a summer camp whose slogan is “Dedicated to Teamwork” – it’s right on the sign to make things easier for all concerned – and we must ask “Is that a case of fortuitous good luck or lazy writing?” Woody soon encounters and befriends Maggie (Chloe De Los Santos) a young camper who doesn’t seem to fit in as she apparently has no marketable skills – it should be noted that she is given a surprisingly good character arc where she learns her skill is in inspiring others – but her mom, Angie (Mary-Louise Parker), is more worried about the rivalry they have with neighbouring camp Hoo Rah, a military-themed camp run by her asshat cousin Zane (Josh Lawson), as well as the arrival of the Camp Inspector Wally Walrus (Tom Kenny) who loves to sight violations very every little thing and could revoke their license and shut the camp down. But camp rivalry and an anal-retentive walrus are not the only bits of conflict in this sequel, no sirree bob, we also have Buzz Buzzard (Kevin Michael Richardson) an escaped convict who exacerbates the rivalry between the two camps so as to remove any obstacle in his search for lost treasure.

“This will be as easy as taking candy from lazy scriptwriters.”

Wait a minute, what lost treasure? Well, it turns out that Camp Woo Hoo and Camp Hoo Rah have a complicated history; they share one important relative, Grandpappy Obidiah Mallard (Ian Rooney), a prospector who came here during the gold rush to find his fortune and legend has it he struck it rich and bought land that he then named Camp Obidiah, a place where his whole family could live and prosper.  Unfortunately, by the time his sons came out to join him he had died and the rest of the gold was nowhere to be found. Because his sons disagreed on everything – one being a soldier and the other an artist –  they split the land into two separate camps and thus began the rivalry between them and it has existed ever since.  Every year they hold a competition called “The Wilderness Games” to prove which camp is better and, needless to say, the grunts at Camp Hoo Rah always win over their nerdy neighbours.

You’d have more fan at Camp Crystal Lake

This is your typical underdog story, with the residents of Camp Woo Hoo consisting of nonathletic nerds and geeks while those of Camp Hoo Rah are athletic jerks and bullies. And as sure as the sun rises in the east our band of misfits will find themselves in a depressed funk as they realize they can’t compete with their brawny rivals, but then an inspirational speech will motivate them to victory, with Angie telling her young charges “You can’t run from the bullies of this world your whole life. If you work together…you never know what can happen. You might find something inside you that you never knew you had.” And Maggie will then deduce how each of her camp mates can you their particular skills to win each contest. But despite all these inspirational moments, winning the big game isn’t the only plot development, we also have to worry about Buzz Buzzard who running around and manipulating things behind the scenes.

Talk about being behind the 8 Ball.

The fiendish buzzard frames Woody for the destruction of Camp Woo Hoo’s rec room which results in Wally Walrus declaring that he has no choice but to shut the camp down. Woody then gets the brilliant idea that if Camp Woo wins the “Wilderness Games” it will prove that they are good enough to be a camp. Unsurprisingly, Zane agrees to this challenge because his camp has never lost a game in their very long history. I must now ask the question “How in the hell does their winning “The Big Game” change the fact that the inspector deemed Camp Woo Hoo unsafe?” Wally Walrus wasn’t closing the camp down because they were losers, he was closing it down because of the numerous safety and structural violations.

“Who needs proper safety laws when we have camp spirit?”

Stray Observations:

• Woody getting in trouble with what looks like a park ranger seems more in keeping with a Yogi Bear plotline than that of a Woody Woodpecker story.
• Woody is kicked out of the forest for not being “A Team Player” so he crosses the street and joins Camp Woo Hoo, but aren’t they part of the same forest?
• It is lightly implied that Buzz Buzzard murdered Camp Hoo Rah’s cook so he could take his place, if only this movie had gone further into the darkness we could have had a fun comedy instead of this generic mess.
• Buzz Buzzard orders a variety of tech gadgets to use against Camp Woo Hoo, all of which are accidentally thwarted by Woody.  This all reeks of ACME supply company found in the Road Runner and Coyote cartoons.
• Camp Woo Hoo’s resident gamer expert is able to visualize the obstacle course as a video game and this somehow allows her to win because we all know video game skills translate perfectly to the world of athletics.

Does she also know any handy cheat codes?

To say that this offering is a derivative half-assed comedy would be a vast understatement as not only does it lack any semblance of originality in its 98-minute running time it also pales in comparison to the other films that make up the “Summer Camp Movie” subgenre. This is despite the fact that its lifting of plot elements from several of them, if you’ve watched films like the animated classic Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown or the Bill Murray comedy Meatballs you’ll know where this is going, and even if you look past all the tired tropes and clichés it trots out as if on a tight schedule it also has a plot that makes little to no sense and is infused with humour that would be hard pressed to make even an eight-year-old chuckle. It’s also weird that in the 2017 Woody Woodpecker movie, Woody was the only anthropomorphized character in the film, in fact, people couldn’t understand him at all – Woody only spoke to the audience in moments of breaking the fourth wall – but in this film, not only can Woody now communicate with humans we also have an escaped convict buzzard and a camp inspector who is a walrus and I must ask “Why does no one find a walrus as a camp inspector concerning?”

Is this a case of affirmative action out of control?

Of course, I must point out that I’m not the target audience for this type of thing as not only am I not a small child I was never a fan of the original Walter Lantz cartoons – I always found Woody Woodpecker to be more annoying than funny – but while I’m sure some kids will find a few things here to be at least a little amusing – kids do love their poo and fart jokes –there are so many better options out there to choose from that I can’t even recommend this film to anyone of any age.