Camping 3 (2016)

The third installment of the Camping series arrives with the quiet confidence of a franchise that knows precisely what it is and has no ambition to become anything else. Patrick Chirac, ever true to form, attempts car sharing and ends up sharing a bed with three young men from Dijon. The campground at Blue Waves fills with familiar faces. Divorce happens. Awkwardness ensues. This is the entire architecture of the thing, and it stands there unadorned, like a tent pitched by someone who did not read the instructions.

On the matter of social consciousness, the film offers almost nothing to examine. The ensemble is a standard arrangement of French comedic archetypes, assembled for friction and punchlines, with no commentary on who is represented and why. Female characters circulate through the social group, though the comedic engine runs on male panic and male vanity. Race is not a subject. The environment appears only as scenery, a lake and some grass, never as a concern. Nobody interrogates wealth, body image, or the workings of the mind. History is left alone. There is no lecture, no sermon, no moment where the screenplay stops to instruct us on how to live. It simply wants us to watch a man lose a bunk bed negotiation.

What remains is a modest commercial object, one that sold a great many tickets in its native country and asked nothing of its audience beyond a willingness to laugh at carpooling. We can respect the honesty of that transaction. A comedy with no agenda is not a failure of conscience. It is a business decision, executed with the flat competence of a folding chair. The sommelier notes no tannins. The sommelier notes no wine.