I actually ended up watching two summer camp movies in the same day, because it’s summer, so it’s the perfect season to release summer camp movies. When else would you put them out? Christmas? That doesn’t make any sense. Of course movies set at summer camp are going to come out in the summer, which means I’m probably going to end up reviewing them in the summer. By chance, I watched two back to back, and while both were surprisingly good, I did like The Floaters just a little bit more. Ironically, neither one has audio description.

The Floaters stars Jackie Tohn, who I’ve adored for quite some time. I’m a big fan of American Idol, and Jackie actually competed on the show many years ago. I think a lot of her fans either forgot that or never even knew because they became fans much later in her career. She was a semifinalist who made it into the voting rounds but just missed the Top 12. If you’re curious, there are probably still a few clips of her performances floating around online. Looking back, she’s had a really fascinating career. After American Idol, she didn’t exactly get launched into prestige television. She went straight into an Uwe Boll movie called Postal. Usually Uwe Boll is where actors’ careers go to die, but somehow that was where hers began. She kept grinding, landed bigger and bigger roles, eventually became one of the standouts on GLOW, and now she’s fantastic as Esther on Nobody Wants This. I genuinely think it’s a shame she hasn’t been recognized with an Emmy nomination for that performance. I also still miss GLOW. She even managed to do really well on Celebrity Jeopardy. I doubt that when America voted her off American Idol she imagined she’d eventually become one of the stars of an Emmy nominated series, but here she is, now leading her own movie.

In The Floaters, Jackie plays Nomi, a self-proclaimed artist whose band falls apart after her boyfriend replaces her with an influencer before heading out on tour. Suddenly without any real direction, she accepts an invitation from a friend to spend the summer working at a Jewish summer camp. She ends up assigned to The Floaters, the kids who didn’t sign up for any of the camp’s featured activities and basically got tossed together by default. Normally the counselor in her position would just have them put on Fiddler on the Roof for what feels like the 150th time, but she wants to do something different. She wants the kids to create something that’s actually their own, so she has them brainstorm ideas and develop an original production. The result is a play that’s rooted in Judaism and their beliefs while also poking fun at them in exactly the way a bunch of teenagers would. Which, naturally, means there are plenty of dick jokes. It’s immature, sure, but it also feels honest. Underneath the crude humor is an interesting look at how these kids view their religion and where they see themselves fitting into it today. Of course, not everybody at camp is thrilled with this idea. There’s plenty of resistance, especially because the camp is competing against another one run by Seth Green’s character. There’s money on the line that Jackie’s camp desperately needs, so putting on a weird, experimental show written by the campers doesn’t exactly seem like the safest strategy. Maybe they really should just dust off Fiddler on the Roof for the 150th time. But Nomi sticks with it, and that’s ultimately where The Floaters really works. As she gets to know these kids, they slowly start coming out of their shells. This random collection of campers who probably never would have been friends outside of camp gradually becomes a real group. They throw themselves into the production, begin caring about something they initially dismissed as silly, and push themselves far beyond what they thought they were capable of. Not everyone wants to be on stage at first, but eventually they’re encouraged to take that leap, and that’s where the movie finds its heart.

What I really enjoyed about The Floaters was how effortless it all feels. It’s charming, funny, clever, and reminiscent of a lot of camp movies that came before it, but in all the right ways. The comparison to School of Rock is there, but it never feels like a copy because while Nomi starts the movie after being separated from her own creative group, she never uses these kids as a stepping stone to revive her career the way Dewey does. Instead, she genuinely invests in helping them find something that’s theirs. I also found myself thinking about movies like Heavyweights, Camp Nowhere, and even both movies titled Camp. The earlier one that featured Anna Kendrick before she became a household name, and the one released this year, which I’d literally watched right before this one, so it was naturally still fresh in my mind.

Jackie absolutely carries the movie, even with several recognizable faces popping in throughout. Aya Cash is a lot of fun as a rabbi who, according to one of the campers, also teaches Krav Maga. Seth Green is perfectly cast as the insufferable rival camp director. Then there are two fun, cameo-sized appearances from Steve Guttenberg and Jonathan Silverman. I honestly can’t remember the last thing I saw Jonathan Silverman in. I always think of Weekend at Bernie’s, but I also remember his NBC sitcom The Single Guy from the ’90s. It was just nice seeing both of those familiar faces show up.

The lack of audio description didn’t hurt this movie as much as I expected because so much of it is driven by dialogue. Most of the fun comes from the conversations, the rehearsals, and the kids bouncing ideas off one another, so I never felt completely lost. The place where I missed audio description the most was during the final production. One of the parents compliments the avant-garde nature of the sets and costumes, and I had absolutely no visual reference for what she was talking about. That was one of those moments where accessibility really would have elevated the experience. Still, the show itself is funny, and I liked that it evolves over the course of the film. It isn’t exactly the same production the kids first imagine. It listens to the concerns that it’s maybe pushing things a little too far and eventually lands somewhere in the middle, still creative and boundary pushing, but in a way that feels more complete.

The one sequence that really didn’t work for me came from my own experience working in live theater. At one point they seriously consider throwing together a last minute production of Fiddler on the Roof, and I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. Even the movie knows it’s ridiculous, making a joke about the kids walking around with scripts in their hands, but that only solves one problem. You still have to teach a giant musical to a group of kids whose singing abilities haven’t even really been explored. School productions spend weeks, sometimes months, rehearsing shows like Fiddler. Even professional actors would need more rehearsal time than these kids supposedly have. Then there’s the runtime. Fiddler on the Roof is a massive musical. The original show the Floaters create fits comfortably within the runtime of this movie. Fiddler by itself is much longer than the movie you’re already watching. There’s simply no believable way they could have pulled that off, and if they somehow had, it would’ve dwarfed the rival camp’s performance just based on length alone. It isn’t really a fair comparison. That was probably the one moment where the movie lost me, although I did laugh watching this generation of kids collectively roll their eyes at the idea of doing Fiddler on the Roof. They had absolutely no interest in standing so close to tradition. They wanted to create something that belonged to them.

I really liked The Floaters, and I genuinely hope people find it. I’d love to see Jackie Tohn get more leading roles because she proves here that she can absolutely carry a movie. If this one eventually finds an audience through streaming, video on demand, Kanopy, or however you watch movies these days, I think it’ll build a nice following. If you get the chance to watch The Floaters, I think you should. If you’re blind or have low vision and rely on audio description like I do, it isn’t the worst movie to watch without it, but it isn’t the best either. There are definitely moments where you’ll miss having that extra layer of accessibility, but the film is so dialogue driven that you can still follow and enjoy most of it. Jackie Tohn is surprisingly hilarious here, finding exactly the right rhythm as a camp counselor who not only discovers a new direction for herself but helps a group of kids discover theirs too. I hear if you go see The Floaters, you’ll float too. You’ll float too.

Fresh: 8.1/10