Characters / Heavyweights

This is a list of characters in the Disney comedy Heavyweights.

Boys at Camp Hope

Gerald "Gerry" Garner

The main protagonist of the movie.

• Big Brother Bully: It is revealed in a deleted scene that Gerry has an older brother who likes to pick on him.
• Big Eater: While nowhere near the fattest kid in camp, he still is overweight.
• Butt-Monkey: His obesity makes him an outcast at school and his family have no respect for him because of this. He also suffers badly from the brutal torture Tony inflicts on him, with Tony trying to convince Gerald that he deserves it for being obese.
• Embarrassing Nickname: The other campers call him "Captain" after he forgets to take off his American Airlines wings pin. However, it ends up being a term of endearment by the end when Gerry wins the Go-Kart race against Camp MVP.

Roy Murphy

The first camper to befriend (and meet) Gerry.

• The Consigliere: Parodied. Josh's first scene sets him up like a mob boss, with Roy as his second-in-command.
• Hypocrite: Played With. He calls Gerald fat, a man sitting next to Gerald on the plane fat but when Gerald points out how fat he is himself, Roy admits he knows so and affirms he wasn't trying to pick on Gerald.
• Nice Guy: He keeps a sense of optimism and helps Gerald get into a positive mood about Camp Hope. He even reassures Gerry that he won't get made fun of at camp because all the campers are fat.

Josh Birnbaum

The unofficial leader of Chipmunk cabin, he shows Gerry the ropes with Roy.

• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: He's a good-natured prankster but also a capable ringleader who helps the Chipmunks in the fight against Tony.
• Chekhov's Skill: He's the only one of the boys who knows how to shave. This comes in handy during the balloon-shaving portion of the Apache Relay.
• Class Clown: He enjoys cracking jokes and getting Tony riled up with his antics.
• Deadpan Snarker: If there's a sarcastic quip to be made, it'll most likely come from him.

Counselors at Camp Hope

Tony Perkis

The head counselor of Camp Hope who is running an exercise video program trying to get his campers to slim down as much as possible in a short period of time so he can make money off of those videos.

• Alas, Poor Villain: Clearly the product of a neglectful father and a painful childhood. The last we see him (before the post-credits scene, that is) implies that he's jealous of how much the boys prefer Pat as the head counselor.
• Bad Boss: He's verbally abusive towards any of the counselors who try to call him out how he abuses the campers.
• Big Bad: Tony takes over Camp Hope as part of his plans for an instructional fitness video and makes the boys miserable through his abusive and humiliating methods.
• The Bully: He enjoys gloating about how muscular and well-built he is compared to the boys plus Pat.
• Cloudcuckoolander: He is anything but sane. He clearly comes off as psychologically unhinged given how he resorts to seriously brutal methods to achieve weight loss for other people. In The Stinger, having snapped psychologically, he's taken up a new job selling crystals (sorry, "transformational factors") door to door.
• Deadpan Snarker: He is very sarcastic, such as when he calls the boys' hidden stash of candies and even deli sausage a "treasure trove".
• Denied Food as Punishment: Tony outright refuses to feed the campers anything if no progress in weight loss is made as he asserts "Lunch has been canceled due to lack of hustle" and according to video evidence, he announced, "No dinner! No lunch! No breakfast!"
• Didn't Think This Through: Tony could have enjoyed success in becoming a bodybuilder or personal trainer himself due to his muscular physique and athletic skills. Instead, he poorly assumes that he can make money off a fat camp for teenage boys since he wants to be more of an entrepreneur than an athlete.
• Evil Counterpart: To Pat. Tony is physically fit but arrogant and mean, and forces the campers into a grueling workout program fueled by his own self-loathing. Pat is overweight, awkward, and insecure, but he's also laid-back, cares about the kids, and ultimately rejects the idea that he needs to be skinny to be happy.
• Evil Has a Bad Sense of Humor: He can't stand it when the kids make fun of him and reacts to their pranks by taking cruel measures or flying into a murderous rage. During their "cleansing hike", Gerry, Josh, and the rest of the campers use this to trick Tony into stepping into a trap.
• Faux Affably Evil: Even before he loses it, almost nobody buys Tony's attempts to be friendly and charismatic. It doesn't end up taking much to provoke his rage.
• Formerly Fat: According to Tony, he weighed over 300 pounds back in his own youth. This could explain why he enjoys bullying the fat boys: they remind him of his younger self.
• Freudian Excuse: He used to be very fat as a young boy and his own father didn't show him love or affection in his own childhood. According to his introductory speech, he also had no friends or contact with children his age growing up. He seems to have become emotionally and psychologically damaged as a result, although this doesn't excuse him being a Jerk with a Heart of Jerk, as mentioned below.
• Fun-Hating Villain: On account of him associating "fun" with gaining weight.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: It takes almost nothing to set him off.
• Hated by All: None of the campers nor the original counselors at Camp Hope take kindly to Tony's regime and it's easy to see why. He turns Camp Hope from a fun-filled summer getaway to an unpleasant atmosphere where he puts the kids through cruel and humiliating exercises while verbally abusing or brushing off staff who disagree with him. Given how easily Lars was swayed into a Heel–Face Turn Tony doesn't seem to command much loyalty even from his own staff.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Although several characters have a hand in his downfall, he is ultimately defeated because he backflips into a wall, knocking himself unconscious.
• Idiot Ball: After the boys trap Tony and lock him up in a cage enforced by electric wires, Pat offers to release him. Tony responds by threatening a Groin Attack on Pat somehow thinking Pat had something to do with his predicament, and so Pat leaves him as he is.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: In the rare moments where you start to feel for Tony, you can expect to be reminded how much of a jerk he is seconds later. Examples include the cabin raid, when Tony pretends to hug Roy only to frisk him for a Pez dispenser, or later in the film when he acts friendly to Nicholas as a ruse to betray him moments later so he can escape his cell.
• Large Ham: Most obvious when he's on-camera, but even in everyday life he's loud and theatrical. Lampshaded by Tony himself after the campers show their parents incriminating video of him:
  Tony: But I think the villain was a little...OVER the TOP!
• Mr. Fanservice: He may not be buff like Lars, but Tony is still a fitness guru in impressive shape who spends most of the movie either in tight workout clothes or shirtless. Something of a Deconstructed Trope, though, since as opposed to the overweight but good-natured kids of Camp Hope, Tony is a cruel, miserable person with psychological problems that he takes out on other people.
• Never My Fault: The "little Tony" conversation, where Tony has a talk with his inner child, ends this way. Instead of taking responsibility for his weight loss regimen's failure, he responds by punishing the campers.
  Tony: YOU have failed and YOU will pay!
• No Social Skills: It's clear from his first scene that Tony has no idea how to approach people, especially children. He mentions that he was an only child with no friends and at one point, he states he was educated entirely by private tutors his whole life, which explains why.
• Obliviously Evil: While it doesn't excuse any of the horrible things he does, Tony is convinced what he's doing is best for the kids, not understanding how dangerous and immoral his exercise regime is.
• Psychopathic Manchild: What he ultimately is. Tony is an overgrown bully who vents his own self-loathing on overweight children.
• Take That!: A parody of self-help and weight loss personalities in general, as well as Tony Robbins specifically.
• What Does She See in Him?: Tony tries shaming the overweight camp boys into reconsider their current eating habits by forcing them into a dance with a girls camp. This doesn't work as the girls eventually give the boys a chance for dancing and were actually having a fun time until Tony broke up the dance and shooed away the girls.
• Villainous Breakdown: Tony has this twice. The first is on Evaluation Day when he realized the camp boys were cheating on their diets and gained weight from doing so. The second is when his brutal methods of weight loss towards the boys were all exposed through video tape to their parents.
• Villain Has a Point: While his methods are inexcusable and harmful, Tony is absolutely right that the boys are eating too much junk food. Pat makes this clear to the campers later on and helps them eat better without having to punish and hate themselves like Tony.

Lars

Played by: Tom Hodges

Tony's right-hand, who is the highest-ranking assistant counselor at the camp and the film's secondary antagonist.

• Abhorrent Admirer: Lars is interested in Nurse Julie, but she is repulsed by his obnoxious personality.
• Comical Overreacting: He thinks a deer is cause for alarm. The boys after taking over the camp tie Lars to a tree and pour honey over his chest, prompting a deer to lick it up.
• Defeat Means Friendship: While he's a villain at the start of the movie, by the end he's joined with the Chipmunks and seems to have warmed up to them (although this wasn't entirely by choice).
• Dirty Coward: Spends most of the movie as Tony's muscle and seems to be quite intimidating...but proves to be easily subdued by the campers and freaks out when a deer starts licking him.
• The Dragon: To Tony.
• Drill Sergeant Nasty: He believes in harsh discipline and stern toughness towards the campers.
• Everyone Has Standards: Even he was shocked when Tony announced every camper who didn't lose weight would be forced on a 20 mile hike. Being as physically fit as he is, he knows how dangerous it would be for the kids' health.
• Hidden Depths: He seems to be something of a fine arts aficionado, as he runs the apache relay challenge where each team must name a series of famous paintings and is stunned when the Camp MVP contestant can't identify the Mona Lisa.
• I Fight for the Strongest Side!: He was devoted to Tony at first but then when the boys overthrew Tony and took over the camp by force, they tie Lars to a tree but then blackmail him by threatening to cost him his job which would revoke his work visa and get him deported (presumably back to Germany), or he can succumb to their cause of freely pursuing junk food and fun all day. Lars throws himself at their mercy, declares "I love you!" and joyfully defects to them happy that he won't get deported after all.
• Large Ham: He can't seem to go a single scene without comically overreacting. Such as gleefully shouting "DIE!" as he destroys the Blob or when he yells at a one camper for peeing in the lake water and then another for drinking said water right afterward.
• No Indoor Voice: "YOU BROKEN MY CAMERA!", "PLEASE PUT YOUR FAT FINGER DOWN!", "I'LL SEE YOU ALL IN HELL!"
• Paper Tiger: He's physically very intimidating but is reduced to screams when a deer starts licking him. Once Tony is gone he quickly switches sides.
• Song Style Shift: His verse in the "Camp Hope Concerto" that plays over the credits is done as an oompah song.
• Straw Vegetarian: He claims this as the reason he doesn't like being around animals.
• Tooka Level In Kindness: He's much nicer after he leaves Tony's side.
• What the Hell Is That Accent??: Speaks with a vaguely German accent but also has elements of Norse by Norsewest. When Roy asks Lars where he's from, he simply says "far away."
• With Us or Against Us: Is given this choice by the boys when they agree to release him after tying him to a tree for an entire afternoon.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: He is absolutely terrified of wild animals, including deer.

Pat Finley

• Beware the Nice Ones: Pat is a decent guy, but when Tony proceeds to verbally abuse him while trying to let him out of the cage the boys put him in, Pat decides to let him stay locked up.
• Big Fun: He's overweight and very fun-loving.
• Cannot Talk to Women: Gets very flustered around Nurse Julie, to the point where he can barely complete a sentence, though this gets better the more time they spend together.
• Nice Guy: A good-hearted counselor and the most heroic of the film's adult characters.
• Not So Above It All: While he tries to be a good role model to the kids, he uses their connection with The Mole in Tony's squad to score some junk food just like them. This is before he becomes head counselor though.
• One of the Kids: He has his own weight issues just like the Fat Camp's campers.
• Parental Substitute: Most notably for Gerry. Unlike Maury Garner, Gerry's father, Pat doesn't pressure Gerry to lose weight and wants him to have fun, especially when it comes to go-karts.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: He's hardly competent, but he sure is much kinder and more balanced out than Tony is. He becomes much more responsible after taking over as head counselor while keeping his reasonableness and is well-liked because of this.
• Save the Villain: After the boys lock Tony in a cage and tie him up with rope, Pat offers to release Tony in spite of Tony fat-shaming him hard. As soon as Pat releases the tape from his mouth, Tony threatens a Groin Attack upon him, making Pat forgo the rescue.
• Take a Third Option: Gives a speech towards the end of the movie preaching moderation. In general, he represents a compromise between the extreme physical punishment of Tony and the unrestrained gluttony of the kids. After he becomes Head Counselor, he and Nurse Julie show the campers they can exercise and eat right while still having fun.