Bella Ramsey leads the cast of this likable coming-of-age movie from 26-year-old actor-turned-director George Jaques about a summer camp for teens with cancer. Though maybe sometimes a bit too euphoric in its positivity, and unrealistic about the life-changing experiences to be had at a camp like this or any other, it’s big-hearted, well acted, topped off with an amusing star cameo – and for those who think they can spot the “tragic-sacrificial” character in stories like this, writer-director Jaques executes a smart misdirection-twist.
There’s a kind of Heartstopper energy and a strongly LGBTQ+ cast but perhaps oddly, heterosexuality is dominant. It is as if the centrality of cancer has left no room for any additional “other” identities.
Ivy, played by Ramsey, is a 17-year-old in remission from cancer: she is angry, insular and resentful, and worries her parents Karen and Bob no end – played by Jessica Gunning and James Norton. To Ivy’s rage, Bob nervously reveals he has signed her up for a therapeutic “chemo camp” for adolescents in the same boat. Though mutinous and furious, Ivy gloweringly allows herself to be taken there and is in no way reassured by the bouncy platitudes of the shorts-wearing camp leader Patrick (Neil Patrick Harris).
But slowly and surely she thaws, making friends with Ella (Ruby Stokes) – who is desperate to lose her “V-plates” to the camp’s hunky physical activities director, Ralph (Earl Cave), with his badass rebel attitude – tarot-obsessed Maisie (Jasmine Elcock), shy Archie (Conrad Khan) and dreamy-eyed, fragile Jake (Daniel Quinn-Toye) with whom Ivy has a special connection. They are hungry for new experiences, and for people whose cancer could come back this has a special urgency.
A realistic look at this situation would naturally soon disclose that Ivy has been permitted to join the “cool kids” elite, which always exists in any high school-type movie or, indeed, in any high school. For those NPC also-rans at chemo camp, their experience might have been slightly different. Perhaps there is scope to imagine an Inbetweeners-style version of this, about the not-quite cool kids with cancer.
Sunny Dancer is weirdly similar in structure and rhetoric to summer camp movies about Christian gay 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 bizarrely upbeat camp leader, the rules and regulations, the secret prisoner bonding – are upended and endowed with a positive, uncynical outlook. They’re not praying the gay away, they’re praying the fear and isolation away, with therapy and activity programmes and education in place of prayer. Uptight Patrick is someone to be respected and even the camp’s Nurse Ratched-type meds assistant Brenda (Josie Walker) maybe isn’t what she appears. Despite or even because of its generic debts, the film has buoyancy and sunshine.
