“Is everyone here Jewish Jewish?” An unhappy teenage boy named Jonah (Judah Lewis) is being dropped off at summer camp. His father just makes it worse by telling Jonah that the camp will help him “network” to get into a good college. You do not have to be immersed in Jewish learning to recognize that what Jonah is asking is how observant the campers and counselors are, how central Jewish practice is to their daily lives. But those who have studied Jewish texts and traditions and perhaps attended Jewish summer camps may also recognize that asking the question that way aligns with how the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament uses word repetition rather than intensifiers like “very” or “extra.”
“The Floaters” is a movie that will be seen by some audiences as an R-rated Jewish version of summer camp favorites like “Camp Nowhere,” “Meatballs” or “Theater Camp.” It has the angsty teenagers, the outcasts, misfits, and loners, the girls who think they’re all that, the bullies, the pranks, the counselor who does not want to be there either, and of course the snobby rival camp they will compete with for urgently needed funding at the end of the summer. For those who are “Jewish Jewish” enough to know why a spoon that touched the wrong food has to be buried and how to read Hebrew even in its script version, it will be all of that plus an exceptionally authentic movie portrayal of the way Jewish traditions and culture reflect and shape the Jewish worldview.
Like most groups, the characters here have a wide range of perspectives, priorities, and practices. But the film effectively portrays characters who use shorthand when talking to each other, reflecting a shared understanding of the importance of questions, arguments, and the universal struggle to balance tradition and progress. And there is a progressive woman rabbi (Aya Cash) who shares a core perspective-restoring teaching from an 18th-century rabbi.
This helps make up for an uneven storyline, perhaps reflecting the six listed contributors to the screenplay, most of whom are also producers. Jackie Tohn (enjoying a chance to play someone warmer than her more caricatured role in “Nobody Wants This”) plays Nomi, lead singer in a punk band who is fired two days before they were scheduled to go on tour in Europe. With nowhere to go, she reluctantly accepts a job from Camp Daveed director Mara (Sarah Podemski), her best friend since their own days as campers. Mara assigns Nomi to the “floaters,” the campers who did not sign up for any activities and don’t want to follow any rules. “You know, your people,” Mara says, “Just keep them out of trouble, and everyone goes home happy.”
This means that Nomi, who doesn’t want to be there, is stuck with a group of sulky oddballs, rebels, and rejects who don’t want to be there either. The “floater” actors manage to create distinctive personas with some complexity in relatively little screen time. The confessions around the campfire scene are particularly impactful, with Jack Ryan a standout. Three Jewish actors from the ’80s and ’90s are clearly having fun, and they lend a nostalgic gloss in small supporting roles: Steve Guttenberg as a counselor, Jonathan Silverman as a parent, and Seth Green as the head of the rival camp.
Mara has helpfully given Nomi materials for a nice, safe, zillionth camp production of “Fiddler on the Roof,” which will make the parents happy. Mara wants “middle-of-the-road, Hava Nagila bullshit” because she needs the support of her parents. Instead, Nomi encourages the group’s members to find their own voices. When they come up with something based on Sodom and Gomorrah, possibly as a dare, Nomi challenges them to go with it. This, needless to say, does not qualify as middle-of-the-road.
The film itself, despite crude language, stays close to the middle of that road, overly reliant on the familiar conventions of the summer-camp dramedy. But it has an appealing Jewish neshama (soul) that peeks out from under the surface of an uneven but often funny (and occasionally touching) story.
