Wet Hot American Summer

Wet Hot American Summer
January 23, 2001
Eureka Pictures
Comedy, Historical, Romance
DVD
B

This is a parody/homage to the "summer camp" movies of the late '70s and early '80s, from Meatballs on out.  Some of the time it does feel like one of those movies, but one that just somehow didn't get released for two decades.  (It's set in 1981.)  And other times it feels like a dark comedy, as seen particularly in the "going to town" montage.  Then there are the very not '80s touches, like the gay wedding.  Not everything works in the movie, but enough does.  This go-round I was most impressed with the soundtrack, with no less than three title songs, although the best song is "Higher and Higher," which is used for the training montage.

The cast has many good performers, with the best of lot probably Paul Rudd, cast against "nice guy" type as Andy the good-looking "asshole."  Not only does he insult and cheat on his girlfriend, but he lets kids drown and throws witnesses out of a moving vehicle!  I was also of course quite fond of one couple, by then thirty-six-year-old Janeane Garfolo as Beth the camp director and forty-one-year-old David Hyde Pierce as Henry Newman the astrophysics professor.

Bradley Cooper, then 25, has an early role as Ben, the gay Drama counselor, while Amy Poehler (then 29) plays the overly critical Drama counselor Susie.  This time, Molly Shannon is Gail von Kleinenstein, the Arts & Crafts counselor going through a divorce.

Director/co-writer David Wain would also write and direct a couple other Paul Rudd movies I own, Wanderlust and They Came Together (the latter pairing Rudd with Poehler).  Co-writer Michael Showalter would also co-write TCT, but he doesn't seem to appear in it, as he does here, in the dual roles of Gerald "Coop" Cooperberg and Alan Shemper.  Peter Salett, who's Guitar Dude here, would be Manfreddie in Wanderlust.  Nina Hellman, who's Nancy here, would be a Protester there.  And Michael Ian Black, who plays Ben's boyfriend McKinley, would be Trevor in TCT.

Zak Orth was Mike in In & Out, is J.J. here, and would be David Newbert in Music and Lyrics.

Never Been Kissed

Never Been Kissed
April 9, 1999
Fox
Comedy, Romance
VHS
D

I liked this movie at the time.  Otherwise I wouldn't have bought it, admittedly for under $1.  But when I last watched it, I was very disappointed.  And this time it seemed even worse.  On the surface, it seems like my kind of movie: it's the '90s but with '80s nostalgia, it's got Drew Barrymore, and it's a rom-com mixed with a teen comedy.  But it is in fact the worst movie in my collection in almost 30 years (since George Hamilton's Togetherness from 1970).

It's hard to know where to start, but let's talk about Barrymore and her character of Josie Geller, and the glaring anachronisms.  Barrymore was 24 at this point, so watching the movie again (I'd blocked out a lot) I was surprised that Josie had flashbacks with an '83ish soundtrack (e.g. Lauper's "She Bop").  This would make her my generation or maybe a bit older.  But then late in the film we find out that Josie is supposed to be 25, in 1999.  This means she graduated in '91 or '92.  I can see fudging things a bit in The Wedding Singer and Romy & Michele, because, let's face it, pop music was better in '83 than in '85 or '87.  (I've maintained, since the time, that "Say Say Say" was the last great pop song until the B-52s made their comeback with "Love Shack" et al.)  But come on!  If the script had made Josie older, or if they had wanted to contrast the early '90s with the late '90s, that would've been interesting.  But it's just one among many signs that the writers have no clue about teens of any generation.

Now, I'm not going to argue that Romy & Michele or 10 Things I Hate have a documentary-like realism about them.  They are pop fluff, but they're intelligent pop fluff that gets at some level of relatable truth.  This film in contrast does not have a moment in it that is believable even within its own poorly constructed world.  This might be OK if there was a surreal campiness about it, like in Grease 2, but the movie just isn't fun.  It's not even occasionally enjoyably unfun, like Different Strokes sometimes was.  I can't even hate it because I feel too sorry for it.

10 Things I Dislike About This Movie

1. Garry Marshall, as the publisher who sends Josie on the assignment to pretend to be a high school student, shows he hasn't exactly grown as an actor in the three decades since How Sweet It Is!
2. There are a lot of other unfunny and unappealing staff at the Chicago Sun-Times.  (Roger Ebert gave the movie three stars, because he thought Barrymore was great.  Well, I guess I did, too, at the time.)
3. Josie is supposed to be a highly intelligent person but she does remarkably stupid things throughout.
4. Her "romance" with the teacher is generic and annoying, especially the big countdown to a public kiss.
5. The only other teacher featured is the subject of an unfunny menopause joke.
6. The popular kids are either forgettable or miscast, especially the interchangeable popular girls and the emo boy pretending to be the BMOC.
7. As in Zapped Again, there is a beautiful "plain" nerd-girl, but instead of getting her soulmate nerd-boy, she pines for the utterly unappealing B-emo-C.  (Lucy wouldn't put up with this shit!)
8. Josie's brother Rob (David Arquette in an almost likable performance) decides mid-movie to attend the same high school, even though he's 23, in order to help make her popular and win himself a baseball scholarship.  (The school has security check-in but anyone can enroll at any age.)
9. Everyone gets mad at Rob for lying to them, but they all forgive Josie when she writes a fawning, un-bitter article about how wonderful high school was this time around.  They even root for her to get with the teacher!
10. The soundtrack, whether oldies or then newbies, is tired and blah.

Molly Shannon as Josie's friend Anita would have better material to work with in Wet Hot American Summer.   Carmen Llywelyn plays Rob's Girlfriend and was Kim (the girl Alyssa kisses at the club) in Chasing Amy.  Pretty Brunette High School Student Priscilla Cory was Pretty Brunette Hostess in The Wedding Singer, although she was in fact 38 by this point.  Allen Covert, Roger in Op-Ed here, was Sammy there.  Derek Morgan was a CIA Agent in Wag the Dog and is Armcast Henson here.  Lucas MacFadden (of the band Ozomatli) plays himself here but would be Chemistry Teacher in the far superior teen comedy Juno.


(Any resemblance to high school is purely imaginary.)