Poison Ivy

 

Watched August 3, 2025

 

1985

Starring: Michael J. Fox, Nancy McKeon, Cary Guffey,

Director: Larry Elikann

Camp movie! Getting on the train are a bunch of rowdy kids. Dennis (Michael J. Fox) is the cool councilor with all the girlfriends. Ike (Adam Baldwin) is the lead councilor/hard ass. Dennis has a rope tied to a kid Timmy (Cary Guffey) who is a flight risk (the kid from Close Encounters). Dennis kisses a girl then on the train starts hitting on a new girl. Jerry (Joe Wright) is a con kid who fakes the mumps so he can get his own room on the train where he puts on his cool guy gear like a Michael Jackson silver glove and shiny vest. He tries to hit on Irene (Shanna Stewart) from the girls camp. 

 

At camp Pinewood, they have breakfast. Timmy hates everything and keeps trying to run away. The assistant nurse Rhonda (Nancy McKeon) shows up. Freckle faced writer kid Brian (Thomas Nowell) is instantly in love with Rhonda and sends her flowers and a poem, as a secret admirer.

 

Jerry starts having Brian write letters home for other kids, as it's mandatory and everyone hates it. Brian makes the letter, the kids copy it and they pay with their canteen tickets.

 

Dennis lays it on thick to Rhonda, but she's engaged...he still doesn't quit. Jerry becomes an agent for the baseball phenom to play varsity to win the big game.

 

Jerry and fellow campers us the littlest kids to distract the councilors at the water so they can steal a canoe to get to Camp ChickIwanna, the girls camp across the lake. Dennis is already there kissing a councilor. Lots of hard TV cuts. The boys and Dennis escape in the laundry truck, but Timmy gets caught. 

 

Parent's weekend. Nancy's fiancé comes to visit too and is a bore. Dennis borrows sleeping pills from a parent and puts in the  fiancé's burger, he falls asleep. Rhonda does like Dennis and they kiss. 

 

Timmy starts to warm up and his bunk mates teach him how to swim using the bathtub in the camp director's cabin. The director's wife seduces Ike and the boys jump out the window. 

Color war: Gray versus Blue. For some reason, there is a writing portion in the competition, but Brian doesn't like what's he written so they lose that portion. The bunks are split up into the different teams. They add Timmy to their swim relay but Jerry is on the other team and freaks him out and he almost drowns.  Timmy runs away and everyone goes to look for him. On the other side of the lake, they find a weird guy with an ax and what looks like blood splatters, but he's just into making splatter paintings and Timmy is fine.

 

Timmy swims the lake back to prove he can swim!All the bunk mates are friends now!

 

Brian rolls in poison ivy to spend more time with Rhonda.  Rhonda thought for a bit that Dennis was the writer but sees it was Brian.  Everyone is friends, back on the train. Rhonda dumps her boyfriend. Dennis is made assistant direction after he canceled the color war and the wife was into it. 

 

Bland and forgettable, obviously everyone starts out unlikable. On the plus side, no awful slurs with some minor diversity in background players. The cinematography is bad. No wonder no one talks about it. Shooting Georgia for Maine. I watched it in Maine. After I picked this as a bad non-horror movie to watch with folks not interested in horror, I realized that I think I made my husband watch this before, but I remembered nothing.