Wet Hot American Summer (2001)

Kathryn Yao

Wet Hot American Summer (2001)While it is 180 degrees from being a wet hot American summer where I currently reside, here's the review...

It had such high hopes and then it all came crashing down just past the halfway point. Everything positive I say is only about the first half of the movie.

David Wain (Role Models, The Ten, episodes for "Comedy Central Presents" and "MADtv") directed and wrote for this movie. Other than his Spielberg-Hanks, Scorsese-DiCaprio romance going on with Paul Rudd, he did great making this parody of '80s films.

Like other six- and seven-year-olds in the mid-'80s, I was glued to the telly every day and many things (educational and terrible) have gone through my eyes. I saw the reminders to short shorts men wore, the airy flipouts and pigtails and the music. It even helped me hark back to my childhood summer days. That took up a few seconds, then Wain found other ways to entertain. He delivered.

Shameless sex jokes and references, shallow teenagers, un-needed slo-mo. But the best part was the script and the actors that came together for this piece of work. It was fresh and actors who've been stereotyped into a certain role have used this as a chance to break out from their molds.

In 2001, a few of the cast were still considered Hollywood newbies (Paul Rudd, Bradley Cooper, Elizabeth Banks) and would also find themselves coming together in the next decade for a bunch of "Apatow-type" or "man-child" movies.

The ending was disappointing like leaving BFFs you just made at summer camp. Wain and Showalter did great setting the plots for the different stories within this movie, but they rushed the resolutions--if there was any at all. I would've appreciated a "Ten Years Later" scene or what happened next summer more than major May-December romances. I also had to remind myself that these way-older-than-teen actors are pretending to be teens who don't know anything about love and relationships. But I guess that's part of the big joke.

Meloni has created a following with his sex-crazed Vietnam War vet character who's lost his mind. People will don a cut-off blue muscle shirt, bandana and ladle on Halloween.

SPOILER

Wain and Showalter pushed the envelope back in 2001 with the homoerotic sex scene featuring Cooper and Black. This was before Zack and Miri, which leaves no doubt in my mind that this movie spurred the many self-depricating movies that followed.

SPOILER END

Katie (Marguerite Moreau) summed up my feelings about this movie perfectly. Except Cooper is this movie and Andy is all the other parts of my real life.

""Listen, Coop. Last night was really great. You were incredibly romantic and heroic, no doubt about it. And that's great. But I've thought about it, and my thing is this. Andy's really hot. And don't get me wrong, you're cute too, but Andy is like, cut. From marble. He's gorgeous. He's like this beautiful face and this incredible body, and I genuinely don't care that he's kinda lame. I don't even care that he cheats on me. And I like you more than I like Andy, Coop, but I'm 16. And maybe it'll be a different story, like when I'm ready to get married, but right now, I am entirely about ***. I just want Andy. I wanna take him and grab him and just **** his brains out, ya know? So that's where my priorities are right now. ***. Specifically with Andy and not with you. But you're really nice, I mean everybody thinks so. And, I'm sorry if this isn't the direction you saw things going between us. I still totally wanna be friends. You better write me a letter, OK?"