User Reviews

You may find more than a couple similarities to this movie and The Island of Dr. Moreau. The story is about a behavior modification camp for teens whose parents don't know what else to do. Mila Kunis is the main character through whose point of view we experience the camp. The camp is run by Peter Stormare's character, who has developed a system of organization for running the camp, as well as a "process" through which he breaks the children down and reteaches them to behave in a socially acceptable way. Except that we see cracks in the system that suggest it may not be working. In addition, there are people at the camp abusing their power and taking advantage of kids who must behave submissively to gain privileges and eventually be released.

I think if I wanted to know more about these behavior camps, I would watch a documentary instead of a work of fiction. Boot Camp was pretty much what I expected--the kids are treated terribly until the system eventually breaks down and the "mad doctor" is overthrown. It does get you thinking a little bit about what kinds of treatment might be appropriate for out of control teens, but this film won't try to answer that. It is basically another riff on the "absolute power corrupts absolutely" tip. If I had to single out one performance, I thought the girl who played Trina had a truly desperate look about her. Overall, it isn't one I will remember much about.

Spoiled rich kids with drug and behavior problems are sent off to a rehab/boot camp in Fiji. One girl is sent by her parents and her boyfriend gets himself sent there as well. The camp abuses them and they eventually revolt.

True exploitation film is a piece of trash morally. The film clearly states that kids should not be forced to be responsible and that any attempt to bring them into line is wrong. While I think the film is correct to challenge the notions of "tough love" camps like this, many of which have done some good, the fact that the cathartic moment comes when the camp is set on fire and people are killed kind of defeats the purpose. Granted the person is the de facto villain of the piece, but it is kind of bankrupt morally. I wouldn't have minded the death and destruction if the filmmakers hadn't taken such a high moral ground.

I also don't like that these are not your average everyday kids, they are rich little twits since who else could afford to send their kids to an island on the other side of the world (this also weakens the filmmakers argument since the camp clearly doesn't represent all camps like this). I know I shouldn't have gotten upset since its only a trash movie but the filmmakers seem to want to do more than exploit their audience, they want to educate, which I don't think the film does. Then again I'm not the audience for this film, which is the age group of the kids sent off to camp itself.

In its favor its well acted and beautiful to look at. Unless you're young enough to be sent to a camp like this I'd take a pass.

I liked that the camp leader Hail, played brilliantly by Stormare, is treated fairly by the script. Too often in this sort of movie, this type of character would be a caricature. And this whole boot camp notion doesn't seem that unreasonable. His approach does have merits.

But, the lead boy "Ben" managing to trick his parents into thinking he's a drug addict so he gets sent to the exact same camp is pretty implausible.

The camp rapist Logan is treated TOO fairly imho. He dies in a horrible way, but it feels more like an accident.

Logan shows the insidious problems of Hail's approach. Hail's motivation is honest. It's problematic because it assumes the kids' parents are angels and doesn't allow for the possibility that the kids are getting high because their parents are abusing or even raping them.

And there's the bigger problem of Logan. He's extracting sexual favors from the girls for privileges. When one pushes back, he flat out rapes her.

Christian Duguay directs this psychological thriller that has its better moments in the middle of sadistic abuse. Wayward problem teens are sent off to Camp Serenity located on a guarded Figi isle. Sophie(Mila Kuris)and Ben(Gregory Smith)are drugged and transported to join a whole camp of teens that once were rebels and full of don't-give-a-damn. Dr. Norman Hall(Peter Stormare)is the mastermind of this incarceration and rehabilitation. Twisted and sadistic the unhinged doc runs his para-military camp with every fashion of abuse. Imagine being on an island in the middle of the ocean and you're wearing an ankle bracelet intended to keep you from becoming shark bait. This is how you socialize troubled teens. The cinematography appears realistic, but can't salvage the script. Eye-candy Kuris becomes a pain trying to stay so. Other cast members: Regine Nehy, Tygh Runyan, Lexie Huber and Christopher Jacot.

I realize that Tough Love camps are real and that real tragedies occurred in them. Any unregulated institution is pretty much untenable. I was intrigued when I heard about this film, because the dramatic possibilities could have been really interesting.

Instead, all "Boot Camp" gives us is a boy-and-girl in love against the "bad guys" and parents who "just don't understand." The characters are very superficial and all the drama is romanticized. The rest is crib-noted from "Lord of the Flies" and not interesting or suspenseful in the least.

If you DON'T think this movie has been manufactured by a bunch of Hollywood-types to pander to teen focus groups, think about the absolute absurdity of a teenage boy flying to Fiji with a pretend Heroin habit just so he can save his snotty and unappealing girlfriend who even HE doesn't appear to like in the first minutes of the film. How many people had that happen to them? Wait, not all at once. Come on...this isn't screen writing folks, it's fill-in-the-blanks MadLibs. It's the same crap they churn out over and over with a "based on true events" spin to try and originalize it.

Aside from the miserable script, the acting is wretched. Mila Kunis once more pulls her lazy "I'll make a sullen face and say something smart-ass and maybe that will pass for emoting" stunt. Peter Stormare could not be more miscast as the "villainous" camp leader...he seems to have escaped from some grade C Bond film knockoff...I know he has that accent but...it's a bit much in this already stereotypical Nazi-esque role. The Tiger Beat lead boy was so boring that I can't be bothered to look up his name.

I just don't like manipulative films. Any film that inserts the now standard MTV-blast of mind-deadening bubble-gum slop along with the ADD sped-up camera montage to introduce a "moment of revelation" (HERE'S WHERE I SAVE MY GIRLFRIEND!) should be required to self-destruct by now. This was old when it first was popularized and beat into the ground with "Romeo + Juliet." Does any director still do this intentionally?

If this is just a popcorn movie...fine. I have nothing against them. Just don't try to pass them off as some relevant social statement.

**SPOILERS** Made to straighten out spoiled and uncontrollable teenagers Camp Serenity in the far off Fiji Islands has been turned into a modern day WWII German or Japanese POW camp with the well meaning but somewhat unstable Dr. Norman Hill,Peter Stormare, as it commandant. Taking out of control teenagers off their parents and guardians hands Dr. Hill uses a new form of tough love as well as torture and humiliation to get the youths back in line and back to civility. The trouble is that Dr. Hill's methods don't always work and somethings leads to the people he's trying to cure to end up dead.

It's when Ben, Gregory Smith, faked his way into Camp Serenity by posing as a heroin addict that things really started to get out of hand there. With his girlfriend Sophie, Mila Kunis, incarcerated at the camp for treatment for her anti-social behavior Ben decided to crash the place by getting incarcerated there himself. It didn't take long for Dr. Hill to realize Ben's plan but let him and Sophie make their badly planned and almost suicidal escape only to have them again taken into custody by his goons. Dr. Hill then had the two brutally worked over with each spending time in the hole,solitary confinement, for their acts of insubordination.

The main reason for Dr. Hill's fall from grace, with his colleagues in youth rehabilitation, was the sleazy and uncalled for actions of his top honcho at Camp Serenity US Army deserter and, possibly, convicted felon Logan, Tygh Ruyan. Logan despite being very effective in keeping things at Camp Serenity going smooth as silk is also a bit of a sicko when it comes to the many women imprisoned there.

It's Logan's shaking down of young Trina, Regine Nehy, to have sex with him in order to get her a white shirt, making Trina eligible to leave that God forsaken place, that in the end came back to haunt him with a vengeance. It was also Logan's responsibility in the deeply disturbed Danny's, Christopher Jacot, drowning death that just about had Dr. Hill who was covering up for Logan, in his having his way with the women prisoners, to chew him out and almost can him. It was after verbally putting Logan in his place that Dr.Hill put him through the same torture and humiliation that Logan put the teenage prisoners through something leading to their death or suicide.

Having just about enough of Dr. Hill and his tough love tactics his sister ,also a doctor at Camp Serenity, Dr.Ronda Hill, Barbara Gates Wilson, pulled the rug under him. Ronda emptied her terrified brother's gun so he couldn't shoot the rampaging and revolting teenagers as they forcibly took control of Camp Serenity and came crashing into his bunker-like office.

You couldn't really dislike Dr. Hill in that his heart seemed to be in the right place in trying to help those-the teenagers- under his care. Dr. Hill seemed genuinely concerned in helping those young people who even their parents gave up on and discarded like a pet that can't help tearing up the upholstery and be house broken. It was just that Dr. Hill's enormous ego and sense of infallibility got in his way and eventually ended up leading to his sorry and humiliating downfall.

Oh, brother, it's the direct-to-video crap called Boot Camp from mediocre director Christian Dugay. Supposedly based on a true story, yeah right. Mila Kunis is one of the many kids taken from their homes by two thugs hired by their parents for a tough love camp, yes, literally these guys are not suspiciously criminal at all. After that, she is taken to some island and put in some prison camp with Peter Stormare running the joint with his self-help crap speeches. Which occur a lot in the movie. Her boyfriend fakes his way into the program to get on the island and they end up almost escape to a hotel on some other island, but then being captured again. How the hell are the police not on these idiots, their going into hotels and dragging out kids back to their prison death camp. Isn't this suppose to be based on a true story? What is true about thugs taking kids out of hotels and the police or nobody not noticing or how Peter Stormare is getting away with any of this? It's way too obvious, I mean even the taking of kids from their homes is kind of easily explainable away to people. But when it isn't following any kind of truth or reality the movie is scenes of teenagers on the island abusing each other typical stuff, rape, beatings with sticks, and pushing people in mud. Truly, in one scene Stormare holds some ceremony to have one of the teenagers admit to their problems and have therapy and when they don't the other older mean teenager "counselors" tease them and then start hitting them with sticks? This movie isn't at all good, it bores me to tears, the only thing going for it is Peter Stormare and Mila Kunis. Otherwise the movie stinks to high heaven. And it is far from the truth on tough love camps, and keep in mind I don't even know, but I know it's probably most likely not like this movie at all.