A Week Away

Musical / Christian

2021 / 97 minutes
Rating: 9/10

When Will Hawkins steals a cop car he’s faced with a choice: heading to juvenile detention, or accepting foster mother Kristin Alway’s invitation to join her and her son George at summer camp. While Will doesn’t think he’s really “camp material” it’s better than option #1.

And it’s at this point that viewers find out we are in a musical, with foster mom, George, and Will all breaking out into quite the rendition of Steven Curtis Chapman’s The Great Adventure.

It’s only after he arrives that Will realizes he signed up for church camp… and now it’s too late to change his mind. Still, while Will is reluctant, he’s not a sourpuss, and with George as his wingman, he quickly starts to see the positive side of things. One big plus is the first girl he bumps into, Avery Farrell. She’s a camp veteran, the daughter of the camp director, and an extremely competitive participant in every event of the camp’s week-long “warrior games.”

One early hiccup happens when Will doesn’t want Avery to know about his criminal background and introduces himself as George’s cousin. George objects: “I don’t mean to be a prude , but lying is kind of up on the top top 10 ‘thou shalt nots…'” but gets distracted when Will promises to help him with his own camp crush, Presley Elizabeth Borsky.

On the first night campers are divided into one of three groups with Will joining George among the Verdes Maximus, and Avery and Presley together on the Crimson Angels. The “villain” of the piece, Sean Withers, heads the Azure Apostles, and the reason he’s the bad guy is mostly just his cockiness – his Apostles have won the warrior games every year for “just about forever.”

While the budding romance will get the tweens and teens, what makes A Week Away brilliant for everyone is the musical numbers. In a genius move, writer and producer Alan Powell features all sorts of 90s CCM songs to hook mom and dad, and then absolutely nails the choreography: these dance numbers are as good as anything you’ve seen. Cameos add to the fun, with Steven Curtis Chapman appearing as a frantic lifeguard during a beach number featuring his song “Dive.” Then Amy Grant shows up as a cafeteria lady while everyone is singing her “Baby, baby.” Their screen time amounts to no more than 10 seconds, but it’s a fun wink for parents who spot them.

This is basically High School Musical, though this time the Christians have one-upped their competition.

Cautions

The cautions here amount to the sort you might offer for the Contemporary Christian Music featured throughout: it’s Christianity-lite, with quite a bit about God’s grace, and not much about sin. Will is a juvenile delinquent, but his crime spree is played off as just short of inconsequential (who can help but laugh when we’re told he tried selling his old school on Craigslist?) and as a result the story is about Will’s need for friends and family, and not his need for a Saviour.

A more specific caution relates to one lyric, where Avery raps that her team is going to win because “God loves us more.” Her camp director father quickly offers a corrective, but it’s not on the mark either: “God loves us all equally.” I asked my daughters if that was true, and they thought it was until we started remembering how John was distinguished as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 20:2) and David was called “a man after God’s own heart” (Acts 13:22). And, of course, there’s verse after verse about those God hates (ex. Ps. 5:5-6).

Conclusion

Most kids haven’t seen many musicals, so I wasn’t surprised when a neighbor complained about how unrealistic this was. But her problem wasn’t that everyone was randomly breaking into song; it was that no one had phones! I thought that an observation worth sharing: who knows what dance numbers might just spontaneously come to be, if only we put away our devices! I’m only sort of joking. Shut down all the phones and screens, show your kids A Week Away, and then pop in your old Steven Curtis Chapman CD into your even older boombox and sit back and watch your littles bounce and leap around your hallways. This will get them dancing!

That’s the fun here: the joy. The music is popping, the cast are all lovable even when they’re moping, and shucks, even the bad guy gets redeemed in the end. It isn’t deep, but it is delightful, and you won’t be able to help but play it loud. A Week Away is the best of bets for a family movie night.

And, I’ll add, it’s also better than this trailer makes it look…

Producer Alan Powell starred in another fantastic (though not family-friendly) Christian musical, "The Song."

Jack and the Beanstalk

Children's

1952 / 83 minutes 

Rating: 7/10 

Bud Abbott and Lou Costello star in their own version of this classic tale. The story begins with the desperate-for-work pair signing up for a night's work as last-minute babysitters. We get to the fairy-tale part when Costello asks the boy they are sitting to read him a story. Then, when we shift from the real world to the fairy tale, the film switches over from a sepia-toned black and white to full color, like happens in The Wizard of Oz. And also like Oz, the people populating this fairyland look awfully familiar. 

While the story continues on in the usual way, there are some wrinkles, including Jack (Costello) getting a buddy to come along for the adventure – Abbott is the village butcher who wants to retrieve his stolen cow. A princess and prince are two more addition, both of them kidnapped by the giant and held for ransom. This is the romantic angle, the two of them starting as strangers, unable to see each other in their adjoining cells, but falling in love as they talk and sing to one another through the bars. 

When we meet the villain of the piece, parents might be surprised to see that he's only 7 or 8 feet tall – big, sure, but are we calling that a giant? But that only shows this is intended for children, more than families. Sure, mom and dad can come along for the ride, and they'll like lots of bits of it too, but this is meant for the undiscerning younger viewer who isn't going to find fault with a short giant, a singing harp whose lips don't move, or duels done with bending rubber swords. They'll laugh the first, second, and third time that Jack trips or gets bonked on the head, even as mom and dad will get their main enjoyment vicariously, watching their kids. 

I should mention one joke that parents will have to explain. At one point Costello inadvertently mixes some gunpowder into the chicken feed, and while I won't give away what happens, kids who have never seen a powder horn will have to be clued into what just happened if they are going to get the joke. 

Cautions

A minor caution would be that the boy they are babysitting is uppity...but mom and dad can point that out. 

The main caution is with the physical humor. The fights with the giant are all played to comic effect, and I think today's kids will get that. The only scene I found off-putting was in the black and white conclusion, where Abbott slaps Costello for sleeping on the job. Costello seems to feel no ill effects, but I mention it only because it happened in the "real" world and isn't the kind of thing you'd see in today's children's films – this is the slap in slapstick, and it just struck me as mean, not funny.

Conclusion

This is a good film for the kids, but in need of some parental guidance because of the slapstick. For the parents it is a little slow, and a little too silly, but still enjoyable over all. 

The film's copyright has expired which has allow all sorts of publishers to put out their own tweaked versions. That means you kind find copies that are entirely black and white, and the different versions vary in length from 78 to 83 minutes. So be sure you find a good one. You can watch Jack and the Beanstalk in low resolution for free down below, but better quality versions are widely available on all sorts of streaming service.

Babes in Toyland

Family /Musical 

1961 / 105 minutes 

Rating: 7/10 

Babes in Toyland stars all your children's nursery rhyme favorites. There's Little Jack Horner, Simple Simon and the pieman, Jack and Jill, Little Bo Peep and her sheep, and of course, Mother Goose herself. That might make this the perfect way to introduce your little ones to the musical genre. Our story begins with preparations for a wedding. Tom (as in, "Tom, Tom, the Piper's son") and Mary (quite contrary) are going to get married and the whole village is so excited they just have to dance and sing! 

There has to be a villain, of course, and the black-hatted, black-caped, black-elevator-shoe-clad Barnaby Barnacle is such an over-the-top meanie that only the youngest of children might be scared by him. He knows something Mary doesn't – that when Mary is married, she's going to inherit a large sum, so Barnaby wants to marry Mary, instead of Tom! To that end, he hires two henchmen – the very large Gonzorgo, and the entirely silent Roderigo – to, first, kidnap Tom and thrown him into the sea, and then steal Mary's sheep so that, impoverished and alone, she'll be forced to marry Barnaby. Crooks that they are, the two henchmen instead sell Tom to the gypsies so as to get paid twice. And that sets the scene for Tom's eventual return. 

But there are still sheep to recover, and that leads to an almost "second chapter" for the film where Tom and Mary head into the ominous "Forest of no Return" to search for the sheep. There they find "the Toyman" who is a Santa-like figure, making toys for girls and boys. Further hijinks ensue, with Barnaby still trying to marry Mary, but this time using all sorts of toys and gadgets from the Toyman's workshop to try to put an end to Tom. When he gets his hands on a shrinking ray he thinks he can finally cut Tom down to size. It turns out, though, that even pipsqueak Tom, with the help of a toy army, is more than a match for Barnaby!

Cautions

Not much to note here: the talking trees in the Forest of No-Return were the only truly scary characters for my sensitive 7-year-old, and it helped to assure her that they turn out to be not so bad after all. Also, Tom briefly plays the part of a gypsy fortune-teller, and that might have been problematic if it wasn't all just a prank on Barnaby.

Conclusion

The acting is over-the-top and the characters are all from nursery rhymes so the target audience is clearly children. But there's so much color and energy and action that older kids and parents will enjoy it too.