Woody Woodpecker Gets Booed at Camp

There’s a moment in Woody Woodpecker Goes to Camp where the titular character, voiced with frenetic energy by Eric Bauza, tries to rally his fellow campers with a speech about teamwork. The camera lingers on their unenthusiastic faces, a visual cue that the film itself seems to miss—this is a movie desperately trying to be something it’s not.

Director Jonathan A. Rosenbaum, making his feature debut, has a clear affection for slapstick but lacks the precision of classic Woody Woodpecker shorts or even the 2017 live-action reboot. The animation and live-action blend feels clunky, with wooden performances from the human cast—Mary-Louise Parker’s Angie and Josh Lawson’s Zane are particularly stiff—and over-the-top voice acting that doesn’t always land.

The story, co-written by Jim Martin, Cory Edwards, and Stephen Mazur, is a mess of subplots. Woody Woodpecker (Bauza) gets kicked out of the forest for tormenting an influencer camper, which sets up a weak premise about learning teamwork at Camp Woo Hoo. The real conflict comes from Buzz Buzzard (Kevin Michael Richardson), an escaped convict posing as a chef who wants to rob a hidden treasure. This should be chaotic fun, but the film struggles to balance its tonal shifts between family-friendly comedy and darker themes of blackmail and robbery.

Where Woody Woodpecker Goes to Camp finds some footing is in its visual gags—Woody’s antics are still delightfully destructive, and the Wilderness Games sequence has a few standout moments. The animation team clearly had fun designing the absurd challenges, from obstacle courses to creative problem-solving tasks. However, these sequences are too sparse, buried under a runtime bloated with filler.

The film’s biggest misstep is its lack of originality. It borrows heavily from Cheaper by the Dozen (2003) and Spirited (2022), but without the charm or emotional depth of either. The attempt to modernize Woody for a new generation falls flat, as the humor often feels dated or forced.

Etiquetas: familia, El Pájaro Loco ¡Lío en el campamento!, Eric Bauza, Jonathan A. Rosenbaum, Kevin Michael Richardson, Tom Kenny