Wet Hot American Summer - Cheap Thoughts

With Netflix's new prequel series to Wet Hot American Summer, I decided to watch the original film and see what the big deal about it is. WHAS is a satirical teen comedy set in the last day of summer camp where a large ensemble of characters are all trying to achieve different goals before they have to leave. Now despite the fact that this movie is listed as a satire, i would say it learns more towards straight up parody along the lines of Naked Gun or Airplane, not saying it's as good as either of those two, but it has a similar style. Satire is usually much more subtle, has more commentary too it, while this film here has characters put in silly and over the top situations that obviously couldn't happen in real life. I also feel it's important to make that a known fact about this film because if you don't know what the film is, then you might be fooled into thinking it's just a regular teen comedy because that's what the film's tone and opening feels like, instead of throwing you into a silly environment the film takes it's time to introduce you and i feel this works against the movie, because when the film starts to use cartoonish jokes but it's still playing it straight faced, it feels out of place and bad.

The biggest problem with this movie is its tone, it's trying to be a parody film but maintain the tone or a coming of age teen comedy and they don't blend well and sometimes the movie takes itself seriously, sometimes it's more of a goofball comedy and because of this some of the jokes suffer and don't come across as funny as they could have if they had just gotten the tone right. Take a film like Hot Shots, my personal favourite parody movie, straight away that movie nails it's tone, being a goofy parody movie, but also having enough elements of Top Gun to have a perfect blend of the two. However, though it may sound like i disliked this movie, i enjoyed it a fair amount, when the comedy does work i was laughing quite a bit, including a capture the flag sequence which i thought was great. The film's comedy i would say is 50/50, some of the jokes were really funny, while others feel half-baked or unnecessarily long, for example, Paul Rudd's character has this trait where every time he kisses someone he licks them an insane amount, and while that may get a chuckle the first time round...why did they keep doing it? Did they honestly think that was funny enough to deserve a recurring joke?

Speaking of Paul Rudd, wow does this movie have a massive cast, it's hard to believe so many people involved would end up becoming such massive stars. Paul Rudd, Molly Shannon, Amy Poehler, David Hyde Pierce, Joe Lo Truglio, Elizabeth Banks, Bradley Cooper! For such a small movie at release, it has a really big cast of characters. Out of all the characters I would say David Hyde Pierce as an astro-physicist was my favourite character, his performance nailed what the tone of the movie should have been, playing it completely straight-faced and overly serious, he was easily the funniest part of the movie. While there were some inconsistencies in characters, for example Paul Rudd was at points the cool guy of the camp that everyone respected (Like Fonzy), while other times he was the douche bag that was the obstacle in the way of two characters falling in love. Also one of the subplots in the film has a counsellor going through a divorce and the kids acting as her therapists, funny set up, but the final punch-line is...inappropriate, that's as far as i can say without spoiling it, if you've seen the movie then you know what i'm talking about.

There were also some continuity errors, for example in one shot there would be raindrops or damp wood but in the next it was completely dry. I understand why this was because it was a small movie with a limited shooting schedule and according to the cast & crew it rained for 80% of the shoot, which is especially bad when the majority of your film takes place outside. So i give them a pass for that but it is still technically a problem big enough that it's worth pointing out.

Overall the film had enough good jokes that i did enjoy myself, but also a fair amount that i disliked and the tone didn't have enough focus to make it a great parody. I'm giving Wet Hot American Summer a 6/10.

-Danny