Wet Hot American Summer

WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER (David Wain, 2001)

Hormones and emotions are running high at Camp Firewood on the last day of the summer of 1981. In WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER the teenage counselors and adult administrators are looking for love, especially if it’s been elusive during these muggy months, while their pre-teen charges are sad over the imminent separation from their new best friends.

Camp director Beth (Janeane Garofalo) has her eye on vacationing astrophysics associate professor Henry (David Hyde Pierce). Shy counselor Coop (Michael Showalter) is infatuated with Katie (Marguerite Moreau), but she’s dating resident bad boy Andy (Paul Rudd). Big-talking Victor (Ken Marino) is desperate to score with a ready and willing Abby (Marisa Ryan), but being assigned to take some boys a couple hours away for whitewater rafting may thwart his chance. Susie (Amy Poehler) and Ben (Bradley Cooper) are preoccupied with organizing the evening’s talent show. Arts and crafts teacher Gail (Molly Shannon), whose marriage is in shambles, is about as stable as a macaroni art project.

Written by The State’s Showalter and David Wain, who also directs, and featuring other members of the sketch comedy troupe, WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER unfolds in short episodes from the final day of the season. It begins as a straightforward spoof of late 1970s and early 1980s camp films, programming seemingly in heavy rotation on pay cable movie channels in the mid-’80s. (MEATBALLS, a clear inspiration for this film, is the most prominent example.)

True to The State’s absurdist style, the film evolves into something much weirder and more unpredictable. The humor is rooted in intentional continuity errors, non sequiturs, and montages riffing on films with no relevance to camp comedies. There’s a distinct hit-and-miss quality to the various ideas they’re playing with, but enough of these strange jokes connect for WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER to succeed. For instance, a pep talk before and team response to a big game subverts expectations. Rudd behaves like a petulant toddler when ordered to clean up the mess he makes in the cafeteria.

The execution and exaggeration of the counselors going on an over-the-top bender during an infrequent opportunity to go into town make the montage sufficiently funny, but what elevates the scene is how it reflects real camp life. The same goes for the talent show scene and its host Alan Shemper (Showalter), a Catskills comedian who hasn’t written a joke too hacky to tell. The gag is that none of what hits the camp stage is funny, but the insular community and campers starved for entertainment eat it up. The outsized reactions serve as the punchlines.

In addition to the actors already mentioned, WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER also features Elizabeth Banks, Christopher Meloni, and Michael Ian Black. Like FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH and DAZED AND CONFUSED, the cast is a remarkable assemblage of future stars. Many are now bigger names than those top-billed during the film’s 2001 release.

With a cast decked out in ringer tees with iron-ons in Cooper Black font, tube socks, puka shell necklaces, muscle shirts, and midriffs, WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER evokes warm memories of movies that likely weren’t very good. Oddly, the film plays better when thinking back to it than it necessarily does while watching it. That quality likely owes to the scattershot nature of the humor, but it also indicates that like the best comedies, it improves over time and repeated viewings.

Grade: B-

Wanderlust

WANDERLUST (David Wain, 2012)

When unemployed George and Linda (Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston) go broke in WANDERLUST, they pack up their things and leave Manhattan with the intention of getting a helping hand in Atlanta from his rich but miserable brother Rick and sister-in-law Marissa (Ken Marino and Michaela Watkins).  Worn down after a long day’s drive, they decide to make an overnight stop at the next closest place rather than push on to their destination.

The GPS directs them to Elysium, which sounds like a charming bed and breakfast but turns out to be a rural Georgia commune.  Although they’re reluctant at first to stay, they enjoy a restful night spent with the friendly hippies who live there.  George and Linda continue on to Rick and Marissa’s but soon bail on the thought of living with them until they get back on their feet.  Rick lords his generosity over them, and George can’t stand the thought of slaving away at his sibling’s port-a-john rental company day in and day out.

So it’s back to Elysium for the frazzled couple.  They commit to trying out the alternative lifestyle for two weeks before deciding what comes next.  Linda gradually adapts to the carefree ways of the farm while George finds it all a bit absurd and holds out hope of a job back in New York City coming through.

Considering that a significant part of WANDERLUST’s comedy is rooted in laughing at hippy-dippy conduct well past its cultural expiration date, the commune scenes are an inconsistent source of humor.  The gentle mocking of outdated awareness and hopelessly idealized philosophical viewpoints lands softly when successful, perhaps because WANDERLUST is hitting easy targets.  For instance, Justin Theroux’s Seth, who passes for an alpha male in the leaderless community, never seems quite deluded enough for him to be the foolish caricature he’s meant to be.

The scenes in regular society tend to produce the biggest laughs.  George and Linda’s two scenes with a real estate agent played by Linda Lavin highlight the ridiculous contortions in which contemporary life can bend things.  The couple’s indecisiveness over whether they’re prepared to commit to purchasing a place hits the modern and urban sense of uncertainty.  The parrying over how to describe the home in question--is it a micro-loft or a studio apartment?--strikes at how branding and rebranding keep definitions slippery for those who need to know what they might acquire.  It’s easy to understand how losing the illusions of high pressure civilization might appeal to a couple burned by it.

Rudd has become something of a comedic MVP.  While his finest work isn’t in WANDERLUST, he’s still very amusing in the ways in which he wrestles with George’s choices and twists in agony over the nonsense and temptations around him. Aniston, who often comes across a smidgen or two too uptight in her recent films, takes to her character’s awakening to laissez faire living with gusto.

Written and directed by and featuring several members of the sketch comedy troupe The State, WANDERLUST has a freewheeling, improvisational aesthetic that doles out enough solid jokes, even if it does so erratically.  Enough jokes connect from scene to scene to make this a mostly worthwhile comedy even if feels like less than the sum of its best lines and reactions.

Grade: B-