Review of Wet Hot American Summer (2001) by Nick O — 18 Jun 2011

What odd future is this? Baby boomers past, dude, when crackers and marshmallows met and the wigwam sector exploded. Shit bred "Meatballs", Christ's sake. Ripe for spoof, you bet. But therein lies the success of David Wain's "Wet Hot American Summer". It's satire played as dumbfounding sketch, ready for cable waves but not fit for the big screen. So? Well...the problem's unavoidable, and redundant through the 100-minute running time. Wain, who directed and co-wrote the script with star Michael Showalter, stays on the surface of the happenings, not once letting "American Summer" slip into the folds of something that wants to have its cake and eat it, too.

Me, I dug the weirdness. I liked the absence of the slightest linearity. Why? Because it's a heck-ton of hilarious fun. Wain and Showalter focus on the scope of everything, from the romantic troubles of both Camp Firewood head honcho Beth (Janeane Garofalo) -- weak for vacationing astrophysicist Henry (David Hyde Pierce, going full pedophile-geek mode) -- and arts and crafts teach Gail (the always delightful Molly Shannon) -- just divorced from sleazy Ron (Judah Friedlander, who makes a cameo) -- to the sex woes of the counselors, like the worldly indifferent Gerald (Showalter), quiet hottie Katie (Marguerite Moreau), and touchy tough guy Victor (Ken Marino).

The cast list could stretch for miles. Wain doesn't even try taking all of it on. Instead, he picks to piss off the audience by analyzing none of the crew's bigger problems, only to find stoner relaxation in the idiosyncratic. "Wet Hot American Summer" is alive with off-screen fun that leaks onto the screen like one big accident. Here's a comedy that reeks the cheese of a dying sketch, out of time for a punchline, bloated save the balls of a sniveling soul with an eye for the just-inaccessible funny.