Heyyyy, it's 1996 and all the stars of your favorite TV shows have congregated to bring you one happenin' film about misfit city kids forced to rough it on the Oregon Trail!
Yep, another one of those. What to do with sitcom stars during the summer hiatus? Stick 'em in a TV-movie. Kidz is most closely related to Camp Cucamonga, and not just because of the Candace Cameron factor. There's also a "lost in the woods" plot... and this strange phenomenon where the characters hate each other at the beginning, but by the end they've all paired off with characters from rival TV shows. DJ Tanner and Blossom's brother make out... Ashley Banks gets snuggly with Eddie Winslow... ah, love in the woods.
Kidz is the story of a doofy teacher, Mr. Foster, who gets this idea to take the failures from his history class on a tour of part of the Oregon trail. The assistant principal, Miss Duffy, tags along with a video camera; her mission is to videotape the field trip going awry so that Mr. Foster will get fired. And there are mishaps aplenty... a wagon goes over a cliff, a horse runs away, the kids accidentally start a brush fire, they get swarmed by bees, and a bear shows up.
Somehow, though, they all make it through every single one of these disasters, and still have time for romance!
In the end, the kids learn to appreciate history -- and Mr. Foster -- and they pass the class, get to graduate, and then I guess the message is that this trip has taught them all something important about themselves, and that they will use it in their lives and be good human beings from now on. Good stuff.
This movie is supposed to be set in Oregon, but they do a terrible job of convincing me. For instance, the kids, when separated from their teachers, find their way to Multnomah Falls. In real life, Multnomah Falls is a big Oregon tourist attraction. They could have easily found help there in the daytime. In this movie, all you see is a sign that say "Multnomah Falls" and a couple of trees. Yeah, I'm convinced.
Kidz In The Woods tries, it really does. It tries to be watchable. 80% of the time, it succeeds. If you can get through that other 20%, you might just be able to make it through the movie alive. And if nothing else, you can make fun of the 90's clothes and slang, and the pathetic attempts to rap... wow, there really is something familiar about this movie...
Camp Cucamonga II, indeed.
