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Crip Camp Movie Review

Crip Camp is a 2020 documentary film directed by Nicole Newnham. It’s such a moving, all-encompassing picture about the plight of people with disabilities.

Down the road from Woodstock, a revolution blossomed at a ramshackle summer camp for teenagers with disabilities, transforming their lives and igniting a landmark movement in the seventies. Much has been said about the civil rights movements of the sixties and before ranging from women to blacks to gays, but we rarely ever hear about people with disabilities.

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This movie aimed to change that and it mostly succeeded. It is actually a very important documentary that needs to be seen by everybody and is a further proof that this demographic rarely garners any attention from the mainstream media even today. I personally did not know anything that happened here, and thus the movie was a great history lesson and time capsule.

It is so nostalgic and imbued with that sense of long-gone history that had its positive moments, but also a lot of despair, that it really became a fascinating capsule that captured so much urgency and activism from this period. It also showcases just how different all people are regardless of their background as here we get to see full-on activists as well as those who were not in the know about what was going on, but still had their fair share of problems in their everyday lives.

The bulk of the second half of the movie is concerned with the activism and how this group finally got their basic rights. It’s crazy to think about it, but up until the seventies in the US there were no passages for people with wheelchairs, which was just horrible. The movie is very empathetic in their plight and in particular some interviews are heartwarming without ever being emotionally manipulative.

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Crip Camp isn’t concerned all that much with the titular camp. The problem with the film overall is that it tried way too hard to depict literally everything from this period with this demographic, resulting in a movie that needed even more time to tell its story despite a long runtime. The direction and pacing could have been better, but the interviews and footage are both amazing.

Although Crip Camp deals with a lot of story that even its long runtime did not suffice, it is still an important look into the plight of people with disabilities and the activism that led to their basic rights finally being acquired in the seventies. This is the one minority that continues to receive the least focus in mainstream media, so this documentary turned out to be an essential history lesson as well as a heartwarming time capsule.

My Rating – 4