Movie Review: "Wet Hot American Summer" (2001)

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Movie: "Wet Hot American Summer"
Director: David Wain
Year: 2001
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 37 minutes

It's summer, 1981, and the last day for the campers and counselors at Camp Firewood. With it being their last day together, the counselors take the opportunity to have as much fun and create as much mischief as possible.

BigJ and I both remember watching this movie in the past and not liking it a whole heck of a lot. This film is a spoof of any of the numerous summertime camp comedies like "Meatballs" and hosts of others of that style. Usually, spoofs take a much more serious genre like action, drama, or romance and make a sillier version of it, but "Wet Hot American Summer" takes comedies that are already silly and just makes this that much sillier. And trust us when we say, it's goofy as hell. It still does what others spoofs do in pointing out absurdities and clichés within the particular genre. There are some parts of the film that BigJ thought took some of the jokes a little too far beyond the point of being funny into borderline annoying territory. To him, some of it was funny, while other points offered little more than a chuckle. Some were just flat out eye rolling to him. Me, on the other hand? I laughed out loud on numerous occasions, way too much for my own good, at the absurdities taking place on screen. In the same way this movie spoofs zany clichés of comedy films, "A Deadly Adoption" did the same just recently with Lifetime made-for-TV dramas. I feel like this movie is under-appreciated, and the amount of times I legitimately laughed is enough to prove me right, at least in my eyes. You really need to be in the right mood to watch it, though.

It's weird to see such a strong currently relevant cast of character here, before they made it big time in Hollywood. To see the likes of Bradley Cooper, Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler and Elizabeth Banks pop up here was hilarious, and also cool to see how far they have come and where they started. Other actors in this film include Janeane Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce, Christopher Meloni, Ken Marino, Molly Shannon, Michael Showalter, Michael Ian Black, Marguerite Mareau, all of whom have gone on to do bigger, better things, some within comedy, and some outside of it. All of these people play principle characters in this film and interact with one another well and hilariously most of the time. When this movie was initially released, though, it opened to mediocre reviews and pretty much flopped at the box office. Since then, the film has developed a huge cult following, enough so that Netflix is just about to launch a streaming TV series based on it. Who's laughing now? Overall, it takes a certain kind of crazy person to enjoy this movie, at least as much as I did, and I have a feeling I will be co-opting some of the lines in this comedy and incorporating them into my vernacular.

**By the way, starting this week, each Sunday we will be bringing you year 2 of our SUN-day Summer Movie Review, so be on the lookout for those each coming week!!**

My Rating: 7.5/10
BigJ's Rating: 6.5/10
IMDB's Rating: 6.7/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 37%
Do we recommend this movie: Sure, why not?
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One year ago, we were watching: "Million Dollar Arm" and "The Sandlot"