Meatballs 4 Reviews

Haven't audiences who've suffered through ROUND TRIP TO HEAVEN and ROCK 'N' ROLL HIGH SCHOOL FOREVER earned a rest from the singing-dancing-comedic talents of Corey Feldman? His presence notwithstanding, MEATBALLS 4 offers some mildly entertaining "how I spent my summer vacation getting laid and becoming a better teenager" escapism. Strapped by a $200,000 mortgage on his Lakeside Resort and faced with dwindling enrollment, Neil Peterson (Jack Nance) may be forced to sell out to his state-of-the-art competitor, Monica (Sarah Douglas), who owns the popular Twin Oaks Camp. Determined to keep his coveted property, Neil calls back Ricky Wade (Corey Feldman), the best darned recreation director who ever lived. Since Ricky once went steady with Neil's granddaughter, Kelly (Deborah Tucker), who now dates Kyle (Bentley Mitchum), who's been passed over for the rec director's job in favor of Ricky, all is not smooth sailing at Lakeside. Under Ricky's tutelage all the campers, even the obese Victor (Johnny Cocktails), learn life lessons as they improve their ski-and-surf skills. When underdog Lakeside bests Twin Oaks in a competition, Monica and her entourage resort to sabotage. As Lakeside faces bankruptcy, Ricky challenges the oppostion to a second mini-Olympics in which all the honest Lakesiders are defeated until Victor undercovers the Twin Oaks trickery. With clean competition restored, Neil hangs onto Lakeside, Kelly hangs all over Ricky and all the nubile and tumescent summer campers return home with memories of one helluva summer. Inane and high-spirited, MEATBALLS 4 is no better or worse than dozens of other clones of MEATBALLS, SPRING BREAK or PORKY'S. In some ways it's actually more palatable. Sweeter-natured than its predecessors and less aggressively sexist, MEATBALLS 4 is a sort of stag-party fantasy for adolescents in which suntanned babes and stunt water-skiing demonstrations occupy equal amounts of screen time. As the token authority figure, David Lynch regular Jack Nance (ERASERHEAD, BLUE VELVET) calls upon his distinctive comic persona to generate appealing laughter; at least he's not the kind of cruelly caricatured adult one finds in the ouevre of John Hughes. Writer-director Bob Logan's screenplay also has enough heart to score some points for the misfits of this world for whom summer camp may seem like a stretch in the Big House--although the fat jokes at Victor's expense go on for a little too long. Still, the sexism isn't too offensive and there's no homophobia, so why complain too vociferously? In fact, if triple-threat Corey Feldman doesn't rub you the wrong way, you might enjoy yourself. (Profanity, nudity.)