Wet Hot American Summer is quite possibly the biggest waste of talent I've ever seen in a film. And also the most misguided parody that can ever possibly have been made. The culprits of this Godawful excuse for a send-up are comic-troupe veterans Michael Showalter and David Wain. (The State, Upright Citizen's Brigade). Both of these outfits have produced decent comedy in their day, but how they persuaded Janeane Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce, Molly Shannon, Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler into taking part in this film boggles the mind. It certainly wasn't with a script.

One of the biggest problems (and the problems here know no bounds) is that there hasn't been a summer camp movie for years that I can think of so the idea of lampooning them was ill-advised to begin with and most of them lampooned themselves. Of course the Kingpin of them all is Meatballs and that was a funny movie and was our first real glimpse of what a treat we were in for in the person of Bill Murray. Sure they made sequels and there was Little Darlings - but it really wasn't a genre of film ripe for satire.

By far the biggest problem with this film is that it isn't even remotely funny and there are a few scenes that I was repulsed by - and I'm not one to be easily repulsed. Take the anal sex scene between two of the male camp counselors - I didn't need to see that. Yet it haunts me to this day. The only sequence in this film that even smacked at comic smarts was a scene where all the camp councilors got a day off to go to the nearest town and have some fun. Y'know get some beer, let off some steam. First of all they smoke a little doobage and soon this leads to shooting heroin and I believe at one point Amy Poehler whores herself to get some smack. This all happens over the course of a few hours and again it was the only scene that even vaguely resembled comedy.

To this day I feel sorry for the actors who agreed to throw in with their old buddies and make this film. But I have no forgiveness for Paul Rudd. He was so unbelievably annoying in this movie that he should have had his SAG card revoked for 5 years - and I love Paul Rudd.
Janeane - what were you thinking? And David Hyde Pierce - what on earth, dude? And Molly - you didn't even get to hump a pine tree, what was in it for ya lass?