Mark Reviews Movies: A WEEK AWAY

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Review by Mark Dujsik | March 26, 2021

A peppy but formulaic musical, A Week Away is also one of the more tolerable of the recent influx of evangelical movies. It's actually about something beyond trying to preach Christianity to a willing or unsuspecting audience, so that earns it some points immediately. What the movie is actually about and how it goes about telling that story, though, don't earn it much more admiration.

It is a musical, filled with pop-centric songs, often with a religious bent or purpose, and several big dance numbers. The story is set at a summer camp, where teens learn some valuable lessons about themselves and their purpose in the world by way of playing games, making friends, falling in love, and confronting some inner obstacles to happiness.

If it has a transparent point to make about faith or the role of religion in one's life, Kali Bailey and Alan Powell's screenplay doesn't try to drive it home. The lesson here is more about what religious people might refer to as "fellowship." In this story, it simply comes across more like togetherness and understanding for each other, which feels more human than anything divine. By the end, one might actually have forgotten all the songs about a specific higher power—except that there's a reprise of one that plays over the blooper reel during the credits.

The story revolves around Will Hawkins (Kevin Quinn), a teenage orphan who has gone from foster home to foster home without any promise of calming his rebellious ways. He's arrested at the start for stealing a police car, and he can't charm his way out of this one. Will's next stop is going to be a juvenile detention facility.

He's saved at the last minute by a foster parent (played by Sherri Shepherd), the adoptive mother of George (Jahbril Cook), who suggests Will should spend the last weeks of the summer at a camp. Facing that or juvie, Will reluctantly chooses camp.

That setup is basically little more than an excuse for the musical numbers, plenty of games, some scenes of cute romance, a bit of broad comedy revolving around popular culture and eccentric characters, and some inevitable soul-searching. Upon arriving at the forest retreat, the campers break into a big song-and-dance number, because that's the kind of movie this is.

Director Roman White, with cinematographer James King, shoots and, with editor Parker Adams, cuts the bigger sequences with sort of distance (long and medium shots) and rhythm (a lot of edits on the rhythm—and a lot of edits in general) that we expect. The choreography is a bit bland and on-the-nose (The dance moves match the lyrics at times), and the songs themselves, a medley of overly-mixed older tunes (Amy Grant's "Baby, Baby," performed as an intentionally cheesy music video from the 1980s, might be the most recognizable one) and original ones, probably aren't going to be sung or hummed by anyone after the credits end.

Basically, as a musical, the movie is competent enough, although far from engaging or unique. The same can be said of the story. Will meets and is smitten by Avery (Bailee Madison) mid-song. She's the daughter of the man (played by David Koechner) who owns and runs the camp. Her mother died some time ago, although it takes some time for Avery to reveal that to Will. She's religious. He's not, and there's no big moment of conversion or anything of the sort, which comes as a pleasant surprise, considering the preaching in the music.

A bit more charming, though, is the constantly stalled romance between the two nerds at camp: George and his long-time crush Presley (Kat Conner Sterling). She likes him, too, but both have confidence issues that prevent them having anything approaching a conversation. They get a separate but simultaneous singing pep talk from Will and Avery, while some background dancers serve as a distraction. During the montage of games, as a trio of teams compete to be champions of camp, each one tries to rescue the other from a barrage of, for her, dodgeballs and, for him, paintballs. It's amusing, and Cook and Sterling are charming enough.

There isn't much to say beyond any of this, because everything in this story seems pre-ordained from the start and, beyond the inevitable moment when the threat of the truth about Will's past coming to light gives him second thoughts, free of conflict. That latter part is a bit refreshing, since even the "villain" here, an ambitiously overachieving do-gooder (played by Iain Tucker), genuinely just wants people to like him. It gives the movie a free-wheeling attitude that, unfortunately, doesn't extend beyond the attempted fun of the games and songs.

A Week Away doesn't try to achieve too much or preach too hard. The movie is, again, tolerable, which isn't to say that it's good or particularly entertaining.

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