The revenge of the nerds is played out in wonderful detail in “Monster Camp,” a look inside a community of folks who enjoy Live Action Role Playing (yes, that’s officially LARP).
These particular fantasy-minded people are from the Seattle chapter of a game organization known as NERO, which encourages people to get together for a weekend of dress-up. It’s not literally scripted, but it does follow a 200-page notebook of rules and regulations.
These rules are funny enough, but Portland-based director Cullen Hoback doesn’t worry much that we understand exactly what the plot line is. One gathers it would be impossible for the role-players themselves to understand that.
What’s more important is finding the individual stories of these people, and what has made them break away from the workaday world to vanish into endless hours of online gaming and long discussions of “Star Trek” (I don’t think there’s any of the latter on display here, but I’m making an assumption).
Everybody gathers at a park for the weekend festivities, dressed in various shades of medieval garb mixed with “Lord of the Rings” finery. Magic is afoot, spells are cast, potions are mixed. Foam-rubber swords are drawn with regularity.
The overseer is Shane, a guy who’s frankly tired of guiding the Seattle NERO chapter for the last eight years, and hopes to retire at the end of this weekend. You can’t blame him: Keeping track of the bruised feelings and forceful egos of the role-players can be no easy job.
Many gloriously odd people emerge. My favorite was the guy who comes to the weekend as a new character, a “Dream Moth,” who has the ability to eat the minds of his victims.
Despite the ripe possibilities for cheap ridicule, Hoback stays neutral and lets these folks do their thing — and sure enough, by the end of the movie, you’re enjoying their company and rooting for them. But seriously, gang, get off the Internet and go to a cafe and initiate a conversation with someone. That’s a much more complicated kind of role playing.
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