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Tuesday, 15 August 2006 01:10 |
Located in New York's legendary Catskill Mountains, the Stagedoor Manor boasts many famous alumni, as the press notes (if not the film itself) proudly attests. These include Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Felicity Huffman, Robert Downey Jr. and, of course, Graff, who transformed his experiences into his affectionate cinematic tribute.
Here, Shiva tracks the progress of various teenage camp attendees, including one, Robert Wright, who already had appeared on Broadway, as Simba in "The Lion King." Unfortunately, the 15-year-old got an early taste of the cruelties of show business as he was forced to depart the production when his voice changed.
"Stagedoor" lurches from scene to scene in haphazard fashion, rarely providing the depth or context that would make its cinema verite portrait illuminating or memorable. While these theater-centric youngsters who worship at the altar of Stephen Sondheim are an undeniably offbeat and entertaining group, their experiences at the camp, ranging from classroom exercises to a student production of "Mame," seem more suitable for the subject for a "60 Minutes" segment than a feature-length film.
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