Film #18 in The June Challenge

Wet Hot American Summer is a ridiculously absurd comedy with a great cast and a lot of bizarre humour. The film's style of comedy is definitely composed of a lot of randomness, which is one of my favourite styles of comedy when it is done well (see: Hot Rod, Father's Day). This film treats its ridiculous situations very well, letting them happen organically and without having characters comment on them later (there aren't any moments where anyone goes, "hey wasn't that crazy when we robbed that old lady?"). The film allows the absurd moments to happen without treating them stupidly, and the actors do a great job at finding the appropriate level of campiness…

I love sluts! Sluts rock! It's just, you know, it's just gotta be the right slut, you know?
-Coop

Spoof movies for the last few years have been reduced to garbage like Epic Movie and Meet the Spartans. They can't even be creative with the titles of the movie much less the comedy in them. Little did I know this little gem of a spoof film came out over 10 years ago. I have no idea why this was under my radar.

I think being a child of the 80s you were legally obligated to watch every coming-of-age film that came out, and I think there was one every month for 10 years. There should be a genre called 80's…

SPECIAL EDITION 1,000th MOVIE-POST SPECTACULAR!!!!

Have you ever noticed how people that post a legend for their star ratings in their bio on Letterbox dot com often assign the 5-star position the designation of “masterpiece”? Why is that? What is the objective definition of a masterpiece?

Whoa slow down there, Baudelaire; where is this going?!?

Anyways, what I’ve noticed from people who typically designate the 5-star as a masterpiece, the only films to earn this are mostly austere, rather morose foreign films. Or a comedy of manners that offers dry, witty dialogue, mixed with dense plotting. Or a psychedelic head trip movie that pushes boundaries with form and surrealism. The “masterpiece” classification seems to mostly fit films that deal with…

"You taste like a burger. I don't like you anymore."

I used to love The State, the nineties MTV program created by and starring many of the people seen here (Ken Marino, Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, director David Wain), but a few years back I revisited the first season of the cult show and found myself woefully underwhelmed. Much of it was unfunny, overbearing, and tiresome, but nostalgia for the actors and the occasional shining moment carried me through. I feel quite similarly about Wet Hot American Summer, though I never had the strong connection to this film that I had for The State. But this is essentially a ninety minute episode with a series of intercutting sketches all…

I'm at an inherent disadvantage with this movie, considering I have close to zero familiarity with the kind of summer camp movie being spoofed here. As such, I didn't quite connect with it on the deep level that others seem to. Part of it might be the tone of the ordeal, and it took me a little while for me to get on the film's very unique wavelength. It's easy for me to understand why many critics were so turned off by it when it first came out. If you don't quite get what it's going for, it could potentially feel like a lifeless, shapeless lump of a thing.

Once I got there, though, I enjoyed myself tremendously. It disregards…