All Wet

Several issues back, Entertainment Weekly did an article about a cult movie from 2001, Wet Hot American Summer. I hadn't heard of it before, but what I read grabbed my interest. It was written by Michael Showalter and David Wain, two members of the comedic triad who (with Michael Ian Black) have served up some strange but funny comedic confections over the years. (The oddly funny TV series Stella included.)

The cast includes the two Michaels, and a long list of truly funny performers: Janeane Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce, Paul Rudd, Christopher Meloni, Molly Shannon, Amy Poehler, Bradley Cooper, Elizabeth Banks, and Judah Friedlander. The structure of the script plays to the sketch comedy strengths within most of that group. It's the last day of summer camp in the early 1980s, and hijinks ensue among the camp counselors in a long series of sketch-like scenarios, often intercut with each other.

The problem is, the sketches are almost aggressively unfunny. Do you watch Saturday Night Live at all? You know the sketches that start off with a dumb idea and then keep on going at least three minutes longer than they ever should just to fill time? Nearly all of Wet Hot American Summer is like that. I was seriously thinking about turning the movie off, but I figured I'd hang on for its brief 90 minutes and fold laundry or whatever on the side.

It turns out that the movie does pick up a bit in the final 20 minutes or so. The movie just takes one step farther into the absurd, and with that added ridiculousness, starts to be a bit funny. Maybe it's just that the movie reaches a place where it becomes an effective parody of itself, I'm not sure.

That ultimately saved the movie from being a total loss for me, but still left it a long way from anything I'd recommend. I'd call it a D+. As cult fare goes, this is one cult I do not understand at all.