Sunny Dancer Review – ‘Chemo Camp’ Gives Teen Drama a New Twist | film

forElla Ramsey leads the cast of this beloved coming-of-age film from 25-year-old actor-turned-director George Jack, about a summer camp for teens with cancer. Although it can sometimes be a bit cheery in its positivity, and unrealistic about the life-changing experiences that can be had at a camp like this or any other, it is kind-hearted, well-acted, and topped off with entertaining star appearances – and for those who think they can spot the “tragic, sacrificial” character in stories like this, writer-director Jack pulls off a clever twist of disinformation.

There’s a kind of Heartstopper energy and a strong LGBTQ+ cast but perhaps strangely, homosexuality is dominant. It is as if the centrality of cancer left no room for any additional “other” identities.

Ivy, played by Ramsey, is a 17-year-old in remission from cancer: she’s angry, isolated and resentful, endlessly worrying her parents Karen and Bob – played by Jessica Gunning and James Norton. Much to Ivy’s anger, Bob nervously reveals that he has enrolled her in a therapeutic “chemo camp” for teenagers living in the same boat. Despite her rebelliousness and anger, Ivy allows herself to be taken there and is in no way reassured by the platitudes of the shorts-wearing camp commandant, Patrick (Neil Patrick Harris).

But slowly but surely she improves, making friends with Ella (Ruby Stokes) – who is desperate to lose her ‘V-boards’ to the camp’s hulking physical activity director, Ralph (Earl Keefe), with his punk rebel attitude – the tarot-obsessed Maisie (Jasmine Elcock), the shy Archie (Conrad Kahn), and the fragile, dreamy-eyed Jake (Daniel Quinn Toye) with whom Ivy is having an affair. Private contact. They are hungry for new experiences, and for people in whom cancer may come back, this is especially urgent.

Naturally, a realistic look at this situation soon reveals Ivy being allowed to join the elite group of “cool kids,” which are always present in any high school genre movie, or really, any high school. For those NPCs who were also running around in the alchemical camp, their experience might have been a little different. Maybe there’s room to imagine an Inbetweeners-style version, about not-so-cool kids with cancer.

Sunny Dancer is eerily similar in structure and rhetoric to summer camp films about gay Christian conversion practices—such as But I’m a Cheerleader, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, and Boy Erased.

But all the tropes and situations – the oppressive parents, the strangely optimistic camp commandant, the rules and regulations, the secret bonding between prisoners – are turned on their heads and given a positive, non-ironic outlook. They are not praying away from gay people, they are praying away from fear and isolation, with treatment programs, activities and education instead of prayer. Uptight Patrick is a person to be respected, and even Brenda (Josie Walker), the camp nurse and Ratched-type medical assistant, may not be what she seems. Despite its generic debts, or even because of them, the film has buoyancy and sunshine.