Well, folks, it's the end of the line. This weekend marks the Labor Day holiday, traditionally the last big weekend of the summer. School's back in session, long vacations are a thing of the past, and sunshine and beach barbeques give way to gray skies and long commutes. It's no different in the movie business: giant blockbuster blow-'em-ups give way to small, quiet pictures whose goal is to make your girlfriend cry. And just as the summer blockbuster season must end, so too must Summerfest 2008, the Screengrab's hot-weather feature where we analyze one movie a week with "summer" in the title, with the goal of giving you something to do for two hours while your silently dreading having to go back to the office. But we're not going to just leave you hanging with some cheap piece of junk we happened to notice while scrolling through the IMDB listings; oh, no. We're going to see Summerfest '08 out with a blast by bringing you a movie we've been excited about since we began this project, a true throwback to the summer flicks of yore where you could sit in a theater with a rapidly melting Slurpee and have a few laughs without feeling guilty about it. Summer may be over -- and it may be a long four months until we bring you "The Screengrab's Twelve Days of Christmas Movies" -- but we're going to wave goodbye to it with one of the funniest, most good-natured satires in recent years. Whether or not you came of age in the 1980s, this is a movie that will make you feel what it was like, and crack your shit up while doing so.
It's been great spending summer with you kids, but the time has come to pack up your duffel bags and head home to your parents. But before you do, put on your tightest pair of gym shorts, and join us for 2001's Wet Hot American Summer!
THE ACTION: Late August, Camp Firewood. It's the last day of camp, just like it's the last day of the Screengrab, and kids and counselors alike are stricken with a hormone-crazed mix of excitement and regret: camp is just about to end, but there's still so much to do! Will the head counselor find love with the unassuming astronomer who lives across the way? Will our slightly nerdish hero finally draw the attention of his dream girl away from her thoughtless, philandering boyfriend? Will the lithe, athletic, tennis-playing chap ever get laid? Will the camp's baseball team ever defeat that snooty bunch from the rich kid's camp the next lake over? Will the cook overcome his Viet Nam-era post-traumatic stress disorder with the aid of a talking can of mixed vegetables? And will the fat kid who runs the camp radio station ever take a bath, already? These questions and more will be answered, sort of, in what turns out to be not only a vivacious comedy in its own right, but an absolutely pitch-perfect evocation of the party-as-a-verb days of the early 1980s and the innumerable shameless sex comedies they brought us. Ultimately more a collection of moments than an actual movie, Wet Hot American Summer is so riotous and well-meaning, you can't hold its shambolic nature against it.
THE PLAYERS: Janeane Garofalo shines in her role as the stern head counselor who has everything but the love of a good man, as if to remind skeptical viewers of the fact that she was once very funny. David Hyde Pierce seems a tad out of place among the legions of improvisers and sketch comedy pros in the cast, but he still has a few fine moments as the world's least convincing heterosexual male lead. But the real standouts here are the comic actors who fill out the cast in minor, but often spectacularly funny, parts: co-writer Michael Showalter is only adequate as the longing male lead, but he's absolutely killer in a late-reel appearance as a hacky Catskills comic. Christopher Meloni is appropriately unhinged as the brain-damaged vet who's lousy at keeping his perverse secrets. Amy Poehler is outstanding, alongside Bradley Cooper, as the high-strung type-A director of the camp's talent show. And Paul Rudd, especially, is hysterically funny as a bratty, self-involved lothario who can barely be troubled to listen to his girlfriend when she's talking; he has a scene with Garofalo about midway through the film that may stand out as the funniest temper tantrum ever filmed. Director David Wain (who wrote the script alongside a pre-The Baxter Showalter) shows a steady hand as well as a brilliant touch for period detail.
SUMMER FUN: Wet Hot American Summer doesn't mess around: it gives us the ne plus ultra of summer fun, all crammed into an hour and a half. It takes place on the last day of camp, and, perfectly echoing the film cliche, it features everyone in sight squeezing as much fun out of the summer as they possibly can: hooking up with anyone in sight, driving to town (in a memorable and grimly hilarious scene) to score drugs, breaking out into inexplicable guitar solos, helping their friends get laid, playing Dungeons & Dragons, practicing for the big talent show, and in one of the most subversive twists of any movie parody, prepping for the big Snobs vs. Slobs showdown. Every activity is either turned on its head for sweet subversion or taken completely over the top for maximum laughs.
HAWAIIAN SHIRTS: From the ringer tees to the polyester shorts to the brace guards to the ample cock-rock on the soundtrack, one thing that Wet Hot American Summer gets spectacularly right is the period detail. And one of the most important details when you're making a movie that hails back to the golden age of 1980s teen sex comedies is the Hawaiian shirt. Only one person wears one in the course of the movie, but he's a big fat party animal, and as Homer Simpson took the time to explain once long ago, big fat party animals are one of the two groups who do their best work in Hawaiian shirts. The big fat party animal in question is Zak Orth as J.J., whose gregarious stoner demeanor here suggests that there's someone ready to step into Seth Rogen's shoes if he every gets tired of being really funny.
BIKINI PARTY TIME: While Janeane Garofalo's still too self-conscious to step into one, bikinis are plentiful in Wet Hot American Summer. A good thing, too, as they're occasionally filled out by the likes of Marguerite Moreau and Elizabeth Banks; in fact, the latter in a bikini inspires a great scene where Paul Rudd gets so distracted from his lifeguard duties that he lets one of his charges drown -- then begins a Death Wish-style crusade to wipe out anyone who saw him do it. Beyond that, there's also knit tops, frosted lipstick, short shorts, knee socks, bra-less t-shirts, and the like for your enjoyment. It's all part of the neon-green cocktail that makes up the movie, which, in the end, plays like the funniest 1980s movie made since 1989. If summer has to end, this is the way to see it out.