By David Holmberg
Daily Bruin Staff
If humping refrigerators and tossing small children from moving
vehicles is funny, then “Wet Hot American Summer” may
well be the most hilarious film of the summer. This is not a
warning, though, this is advice: see the movie if you find this
stuff amusing, because it contains enough outrageous humor to
please any lover of obscene comedy.
Using the 1970s and early 1980s summer camp genre as its
backdrop, “Wet Hot American Summer” gets off to a
pleasing start with an arousing campfire sequence. The
characteristically 1970s freeze-frames of the opening titles
effectively transport the film into an era of classic rock and
raging hormones.
Sure, adolescent sex drives are amusing enough, but whether they
are sufficient to support an entire film is questionable. However,
writer/director David Wain and co-writer Michael Showalter seem to
think that watching thirty-something actors pretend to be
over-sexed teenagers is rather entertaining.
And it is … for a while. The movie is extreme comedy, where
all is farce and nothing is sacred. The movie is successful on this
very base level and thankfully, it never attempts to make any sort
of serious statement.
Actually, it makes no statement at all, which is ultimately its
downfall. Good comedy must have something to say, no matter how
clichéd or irrelevant, in order for it to be worth watching.
Instead, “Wet Hot American Summer” quickly becomes an
extended junior high make-out session in which it’s clear
everything that was going to be achieved happened in the first ten
minutes, yet it continues regardless.
Amid the rather large ensemble cast, only two notable names
appear: David Hyde Pierce and Janeane Garofalo. In the film, the
two are supposed to be considerably older then the rest of the
same-aged cast, with Pierce playing an astrophysics professor and
Garofalo as a camp director. Yet the romance that ensues is every
bit as childish as the teenage hookups that abound. In itself, this
is not a problem. But it creates no distinguishable boundary
between the older actors playing younger characters and the younger
actors playing the elderly, and neither Pierce nor Garofalo do much
acting to correct the issue.
Heading the “younger” camp counselors are the
geekish Coop, played by Michael Showalter, and the slutty Katie,
portrayed by the relatively convincing Marguerite Moreau.
Katie’s relationship with the rebellious Andy, overacted by
Paul Rudd, is shaky given his attraction to every single girl at
Camp Firewood. More characters are quickly added to this young orgy
of sexual desires and a zany time is supposed to result.
It sounds simple enough, but every cliché is erected to
such heights that it’s neither realistic nor funny. The jocks
turn out to be gay, the camp pimp is a virgin and before long, Coop
is embarking on some sort of unexplainable
“Rocky”-esque training sequence to try and win the
heart of the shallow Katie.
There are enjoyable moments, however, with the most memorable
scenes revolving around the camp cook Gene, played by the imposing
yet accessible Christopher Meloni. Gene is a disturbed Vietnam
veteran, who speaks to a can of mixed vegetables and has
“relations” with the refrigerators. Although the
out-of-control ‘Nam vet has been done before and done better,
Meloni still bares his soul in an entertaining role. Unfortunately,
like most of the film, the character is pushed beyond reason,
beyond comedy into a realm of extreme absurdity where the only
reasonable reaction is quiet disbelief.
Every actor is playing a whacked out version of a stereotypical
1970s character yet none are convincing in their performances. They
all need to get up and act, yet instead they fall into that
ever-widening hole of bad and overlong parodies, much as new
“Saturday Night Live” episodes and the MTV sketch
comedies do on a regular basis.
It is no surprise, then, that writers Wain and Showalter worked
on the MTV comedy group “The State.” Transporting
comedy television performers to the silver screen is always a risk
given both the lengthy format and the lessening of censorship, and
the results can be horrendous. Much like the transition of
TV’s “South Park” to a feature length film, this
movie becomes an exercise in excess and pushing the boundaries of
taste to a state of disgust.
In “Wet Hot American Summer,” this is perhaps no
more evident than when Garofalo takes the camp gang into town for a
good time. It starts off innocently enough, but quickly a
successful beer acquisition leads to smoking pot and pretty soon
the whole lot of them are in some sort of crack house, lying about
twitching from withdrawal. Then, completely unexplained, everything
is back to normal and all are heading back to the camp.
While shocking in its nonsensical nature, the scene is
completely pointless. This sort of hard break from reality is
jarring and unpleasant, and alienates the audience with its
randomness. Unfortunately, they occur repeatedly and more
frequently as the film progresses, and have the same nauseating
effect each time.