2001’s Wet Hot American Summer was perhaps always destined to become a cult object. It’s an oddball, almost stream-of-consciousness comedy that opened in only a dozen theaters, grossed about one-tenth of its shoestring budget, and got reviews that ranged from puzzled to outright hostile.
Like just about everyone else who loves it, I first saw Wet Hot American Summer on home video in the early 2000s, and it instantly became one of my favorite brilliantly stupid comedies. It’s the sort of movie that makes you feel like you discovered it, so you share it with the few friends you know will get it and casually quote in polite conversation to suss out other members of the converted.
It has developed enough of a following to get a couple Netflix spinoffs in the 2010s, and on the occasion of its 25th anniversary, it’s back in theaters and on more screens than it ever played in 2001.
The film is set over the last day of summer camp in 1981 New England. It resembles films like Meatballs or Little Darlings, but it’s less a direct parody than a collection of increasingly goofy gags in the same milieu. It’s about romances, rivalries, hijinks and geeks becoming heroes, but it follows no internal logic or clear-cut story. It bounces deliriously from one weird character to another. It’s shameless in its attempts to get laughs from anything: bad wigs, incongruous sound effects, deliberate continuity errors, cartoonish lapses in logic. Watching it is like hearing someone drunkenly recall an ’80s comedy they saw years ago and getting all the details wrong.
It’s mostly about the teenage counselors of the fictional Camp Firwood, all played by actors in their 20s and 30s, who are short-sighted, hormonal and sometimes psychotic. The adult characters are played by the only pre-established names in the cast: Janeane Garofalo as the hippie camp director, David Hyde Pierce as the astrophysicist she falls in love with, and Molly Shannon as the art teacher who gets marriage counseling from a bunch of 10-year-olds.
The script by director David Wain and star Michael Showalter, both members of the comedy troupe the State, is a long series of why nots? The camp’s canteen is run by a Vietnam vet who gets advice from a talking can of mixed vegetables. Why not? The talent show is hosted by an old Catskills comedian. Why not? The third act involves a Hubble satellite hurtling toward earth. Why not?
25 years ago, Wet Hot American Summer felt like a bunch of friends putting on a show and not caring if anyone saw it or liked it. Today it has the added fascination of seeing future household names as they were starting out. Alongside other members of the State, Wain cast some up-and-comers you may recognize: Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Amy Poehler, Christopher Meloni and, in his first screen role, Bradley Cooper.
They all get into the zany spirit of this cheap, crass, shaggy, borderline dadaist film, which is still brazenly, recklessly, admirably silly all these years later.