Review: Retro comedy ‘Pitching Tents’ flounders with ‘80s raunch

Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. Period filmmaking can often express a desire for different or simpler times, a rose-colored-glasses version of an earlier era, like the ‘80s. But nostalgia can also offer an all-too-easy easy excuse to swim in the waters of the naughty, the taboo, the decidedly not politically correct, all in the name of “back in the day.”

Such is the case with “Pitching Tents,” directed by Jacob Cooney and written by Rob A. Fox and Jayme Petrille. It’s a featherweight, Linklater-derivative high school comedy about coming-of-age rites such as graduation, career choices and getting busy in the woods. Michael Grant plays Danny, a dreamy, gentle artist whose blue collar father wants him to work at the plant (this movie’s nostalgia even nails the manufacturing jobs), while his unhinged college counselor (shock comic Jim Norton) is urging him to go to college — but only because the principal has imposed some nonsensical competition among the counselors.

Danny ponders these paths with his buddies at “Trout Camp,” an annual weekend of fishing, boozing and searching for the elusive “Goddess Camp,” where topless maidens bathe. From the homophobic slurs to the lowest common denominator body humor to the stale gender politics, “Pitching Tents” is all cutesy retro raunchiness without any innovation or comedic payoff. It might have been excusable back in the day, but now it’s just boring.

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‘Pitching Tents’

Not rated

Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes

Playing: Laemmle Monica Film Center, Santa Monica

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