Eight weeks of summer camp have gone. Only one day remains. A day to bask, laze away, reflect or recap. Or a day to seal the deal.
The nerds, jocks, wallflowers, horndogs and counsellors have 24 hours to do something. Anything.
A who’s who of famous faces fluff about in all of the usual situations trying vainly to put their own hilarious twist on tags. The problem is that only very rarely does the film veer all the way into spoof territory, and when it does it is reeled in too quickly.
Only in the sequence where the counsellors head into town for supplies, before being waylaid and sucked into a spiral of indulgence that culminates in them all slumped on a crackhouse floor – does the film ‘go there’.
Now that’s biting satire! The rest is a pale and misguided imitation.
Wet Hot American Summer puts a lot of time and effort into making a satire which is itself less than 5 degrees removed from the source material that it claims to be lampooning. You can fast forward any random ten minute sequence and not miss anything.
Final Rating – 6 /10. The above sentences are exhibits A and B in the case that I am labelling ‘So why bother?’
