What is hip?

To recap: Last June, I posted about the upcoming movie, "Sex and Death 101," which Daniel Waters wrote and is directing.

Ah, Dan Waters. For me, one of the big question marks among writers. I mean...he wrote "Heathers," one of the more perfect movies of the past 15-20 years. He then spent the rest of the '90s writing (or at least having his name attached to) varying degrees of crap (Two words: "Hudson Hawk").

I have not seen his direct-to-video directorial debut, "Happy Campers" but perhaps I should.

Well, now I have, thanks to the Sundance Channel's frequent airings. Here's the premise: The sole adult counselor at a summer camp for boys and girls just entering puberty is struck by lightning. The college-age counselors therefore turn the camp into a pit of sexual anarchy.

Not a bad launching place, I hope you'll agree. Lot of places you could go. Unfortunately, it doesn't work.

The biggest problems, it seems to me, are these:

1. The film tries too hard to be hip-as opposed to "Heathers" which was effortlessly so.
2. It's too smart to be the sex/grossout comedy it sometimes wants to be.
3. But not smart enough to be the incisive critique of young relationships it also wants to be.
4. Not enough of the jokes connect. One or two of those that do connect nicely, though.
5. After intruiging starts for all of them, the characters never really pay off.

It's not without its charms-chiefly an attractive cast that shows they deserve better movies than they usually get (we're talking about the stars of the films "New Best Friend," "The Rage: Carrie 2," "Cherry Falls" and "Crossroads" in the same movie here).

Still, though. On balance, this fucks my hopeful "Daniel Waters is still a good writer, he's just been screwed over by talentless hack directors" theory all to hell.

The stars of "Happy Campers," reading their script and wishing it were better.

(Brief aside: "Cherry Falls" is remarkably similar to "Happy Campers" in that it squanders an idea with a lot of potential for "pushing the envelope" in teen sexuality: Local teens realize a serial killer is preying on the virgins among them; they decide there's only one way to take themselves off his list. Unfortunately, they didn't make much more of it than "Happy Campers" does with its premise.)