2001’s Wet Hot American Summer is a profoundly stupid movie. I love it. It’s not really a film so much as a bunch of loosely connected skits at a 1980s summer camp that all smash together at the end.
It also features way too many comedians to name, each getting their fair share of screen time while tossing out joke after raunchy joke with reckless abandon. Young love feels like forever, but it isn’t. Everyone wants to touch or be touched, depending on which character you’re following in Wet Hot American Summer, and some of them are successful.
So Much Going On, So Little Time
Sometimes friends turn into enemies in Wet Hot American Summer. Sometimes enemies become friends.
Christopher Meloni, straight out of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, talks to a can of sentient vegetables about his kinks in between Vietnam flashbacks. Janeane Garofalo’s Beth buys astrophysics books to impress David Hyde Pierce’s Professor Henry Newman. He buys camp counselor books in his attempts to impress her. Then, he figures out a piece of Skylab is going to crash into camp and rallies the geeks to help save the planet… or something like that.
Bradley Cooper and Amy Poehler run a talent show, and they’re both unbearable. Paul Rudd’s Andy is a peak specimen, so effortlessly cool with his insults and abusive behavior that you almost want him to be mean to you. At least it means he’s paying attention.
He knows where the babes are, and he will lead you to them. If you’re one of the babes, you probably just want to run your fingers through his hair while he talks loudly about who he’ll cheat with next.
Is Any Of This Making Sense To You?
I just gave you a rundown of Wet Hot American Summer that mirrors the chaos it captures. The truth is, I can’t really describe this movie in a way that will make sense or convince you to watch it. You’ll either appreciate the oddball energy each character brings to the table or you won’t.
The whole thing is about counselors and campers living out their last day of summer with a slice-of-life delivery. There’s no real story, or even any common goal outside of hooking up. There’s no nudity, but there are kids doing hard drugs on a field trip to the library. In the very next scene, they’re totally lucid as if they didn’t just go on the bender of a lifetime.
It might sound like I’m needlessly ripping into this one, but it’s a perfect time capsule of early 2000s raunchy humor if you’re into any of the names I’ve dropped so far.
Streaming Wet Hot American Summer
Wet Hot American Summer isn’t really a movie. It’s a string of events pretending to be one.
Some gags land, others don’t, but there are so many that it becomes a numbers game. You’ll either be the right audience for it or you’ll wish you’d just watched Bradley Cooper in Silver Linings Playbook instead. If you are that audience, it’s worth celebrating for its sheer audacity.
As of this writing, Wet Hot American Summer is streaming on Netflix.