Quartile rating: 6.5/10 · 1 rating
The setting is Camp Firewood, the year 1981. It's the last day before everyone goes back to the real world, but there's still a summer's worth of unfinished business to resolve. At the center of the action is camp director Beth, who struggles to keep order while she falls in love with the local astrophysics professor. He is busy trying to save the camp from a deadly piece of NASA's Skylab which is hurtling toward earth. All that, plus: a dangerous waterfall rescue, love triangles, misfits, cool kids, and talking vegetable cans. The questions will all be resolved, of course, at the big talent show at the end of the day.
Wet Hot American Summer is a genuinely singular comedy — a deadpan, anarchic deconstruction of 1980s summer camp movies that commits fully to its absurdist premise. The humor is deeply strange and self-aware in a way few parody films achieve, earning a high Novelty score. The ensemble cast (Paul Rudd, Janeane Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce, Michael Showalter, etc.) clearly have a great time and land many jokes, though performances are deliberately broad by design. The plot is intentionally episodic and shaggy, which works for the comedy but limits narrative cohesion. Cinematography is functional and unremarkable, appropriately capturing the cheap 80s camp aesthetic without doing much beyond that. The ending wraps up its many threads in a suitably absurd fashion consistent with the film's tone.