“Wet Hot American Summer” (2001)
I’d heard about this cult film for some time, but it was only when Wet Hot American Summer was mentioned in most reviews of David Wain’s most recent film, Role Models, which I enjoyed, that I decided to see it finally.
Wet Hot American Summer is set in Maine at a Jewish summer camp in 1981. The outfits are hilarious, the hairstyles cringe-inducing, and the stereotypes broad, but still funny.
Now finish up them taters; I’m gonna go fondle my sweaters.
It’s a self-deprecating mash up of summer-camp, teen, and underdog/geek films. Paul Rudd is the handsome counselor so cool he doesn’t even have a cabin of kids. Janeane Garofalo is the camp director, David Hyde Pierce a nerdy neighbor on whom she has a crush, and Christopher Meloni the off-balance Vietnam vet who listens to a talking can of vegetables. Michael Showalter as geeky Coop, who has a crush on pretty Katie, Rudd’s girlfriend, is much less funny and charming than he ought to be as the lead. Instead he’s kind of creepy. I couldn’t tell if that was deliberate, since it’s such a wacky film, or if he had the role because he was the writer/producer.
I found it frequently hilarious. My husband G. Grod found it less so. But while he said he thought it was terrible, he watched most of the extras with me, so I think this one at least qualifies as a good-bad movie. It was mostly well-reviewed, especially by Owen Gleiberman at Entertainment Weekly, when it came out.
February 3rd, 2009 at 3:45 pm
I think this movie is fairly polarizing - you either love it or hate it. I think it tends to sit better with people who have actually spent time at summer camps (Jewish or otherwise), although that may just be based on the limited sample of people I’ve encountered who loved this movie. I thought it had it’s moments, but ultimately, this was one of those movies that I felt had a lot of hype (again, based on my friend circle) that didn’t pay off for me. I preferred Wain’s “The Ten”, although that wasn’t a homerun for me either.
February 3rd, 2009 at 9:24 pm
Haven’t seen the ten–they don’t have it at our library, but I wanted to. My favorite part was the talking can of veg–for that alone, I think it was worth it.
February 4th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
this is one of my all-time favorites, but i didn’t fall in love with it until the second viewing. it’s also responsible for my unshakable ‘thing’ for chris meloni.
February 8th, 2009 at 9:04 pm
I think I’d like a little distance, but I would watch it again. Meloni was very funny, and Garofalo, in an extra, said that all the other actors would always attend his scenes and David Hyde Pierce’s–those two were the venerated comedians on the set.
My favorite Meloni part was as the pediatrician with a puppet, Mr. Cookiepants, on Scrubs. Brief, but memorable.