Wet Hot American Summer

I don't watch a lot of comedies --- not because I don't like funny things so much as I get easily annoyed by things that are supposed to be funny, but are not.  The worst comedic offender (in my mind, anyway) is what passes for sketch comedy these days; even classic sketch comedy groups like Monty Python or Kids in the Hall are far more filler than killer, and Saturday Night Live probably has less than three hours of good material from their entire run.  Note: just because you can do an impression doesn't mean you're saying anything funny.  Not surprisingly, when a friend told me I should check out Wet Hot American Summer, I was skeptical.  The cast is filled with alumni from SNL and The State, it has a young Bradley Cooper, and it has Paul Rudd, who irritates me on a very basic level.  On the other hand, my first job was as a summer camp counselor, so maybe the writer/director of Role Models (which I was surprisingly okay with) came up with a comedic gem I had overlooked.

Or maybe I found a film to satisfy my short shorts fetish

Since Wet Hot American Summer is a spoof, the plot is both stupid and terribly unimportant.  Basically, it's the last day at Camp Firewood Jewish summer camp in 1981.  Shy nice guy counselor Coop (Michael Showalter) wants to impress his dream girl and fellow counselor, Katie (Marguerite Moreau), and get her to leave her asshole boyfriend (Paul Rudd).  Of course, being an 80s spoof, the only way to accomplish this is through a training montage.  Meanwhile, local stud muffin Victor (Ken Marino) has to figure out how to take some campers on an overnight rafting trip while simultaneously having sexy time with a horny and less than subtle girl.  While that is going on, Susie (Amy Poehler) and Ben (Bradley Cooper) are trying to put on the best talent show the camp has ever seen, and they take their job very seriously.

This was over the top until Dance Moms came around

And then there is the subplot involving two friends trying to figure out why they've never seen their buddy (Michael Ian Black) macking on the ladies.  Finally, there is the kind of framing story of the head counselor, Beth (Janeane Garofalo), falling in love with an astrophysics professor (David Hyde Pierce) and having to save the camp from a falling chunk of NASA debris.

SPOILER: He saves them with the power of his 'stache

The acting isn't very important in Wet Hot American Summer.  Every character is essentially a one-note caricature of teen movies from the 80s.  As far as that goes, the cast is fine and they play their parts pretty well.  As far as I'm concerned the standouts were Paul Rudd's (I hate to admit it) great work as the gleefully horrible boyfriend and Christopher Meloni as the crazy Vietnam vet, if only because it is so different from anything else I've seen him in.

I don't know who made this, but it is 8 bits of glorious

The rest of the cast was okay, although I wasn't too thrilled with the obviousness of Molly Shannon's and Amy Poehler's subplots.  There were just an absolute ton of recognizable actors in this movie, and most of them had relatively small parts.  Elizabeth Banks was a disturbingly dirty skank, Joe Lo Truglio was underused, Kyle Gallner made his theatrical debut, and I'm sure there were another dozen or so people you would recognize if you liked The State.

Of course, this isn't the sort of movie that was ever going to wow anyone with its acting.  This is a dumb comedy, so the writing and directing should be more important.  David Wain directed and co-wrote this movie with Michael Showalter (Coop).  As far as that goes, Wet Hot American Summer probably won't surprise you.  It looks and feels like the work of sketch comedians, possibly because it is a series of loosely related sketches.  That's not a terrible thing; Wain manages to avoid that all too common SNL-movie pitfall of mistaking a a silly premise for 90+ minutes of comedy gold.  Yes, there is a stupid premise in place.  Yes, there are some not very funny conceptual jokes running throughout the film, like the ages of these "teenage" counselors.  That doesn't matter, though.  This is a movie that knows it is shallow and stupid and tries to make you laugh with what it has to offer. 

Like training montages

Unfortunately, this movie's offerings didn't impress me.  I will admit that there is a certain amount of clever charm in this stupid comedy, but it didn't veer enough in either direction to satisfy me.  It isn't clever enough to be witty and it isn't dumb enough to make you laugh in spite of yourself.

Example: this could have been caused by a super glue mishap, but noooo...!

I chuckled at a few bits, but I saw most of the punchlines coming a mile away; even when I was surprised, the payoff was minor.  Since the characters are so shallow, I didn't care about anyone in the film.  Now, I would be totally okay with that if the sketches focused more on the punchlines than on having douchebags perfect the tone of Meatballs.  Oh, well.

"Nailed it!"

I went into this with low expectations, and many of them, unfortunately, were met.  I still don't find Molly Shannon or Amy Poehler funny.  Paul Rudd still irritates me, although I have noticed that the less of a normal guy he plays, the more I like him.  I also realized that Michael Ian Black, who is capable of delivering one-liners, apparently needs other people to deliver his jokes for him in sketches.  And despite a brief period where people cast her in movies, Janeane Garofalo has never been much of an actress, typically playing the same basic character over and over again in every film.

I wonder if she's going to say something sarcastic

Despite all that, I actually didn't dislike Wet Hot American Summer.  It's a light-hearted, dumb comedy that pays tribute to some classic teen flicks that were never all that good to begin with.  This isn't a bad comedy; it just underachieves.  I spent some time pondering why I was more or less indifferent to this film, but kind of liked David Wain's more recent (and successful) movie, Role Models.  According to my exhaustive analysis, there are two key differences.  First, Wet Hot American Summer is completely lacking in-depth explanations of the KISS songbook, and that is a missed opportunity.  Second, that movie actually had a plot and character development.  That can make all the difference.  If this film went for broke with the stupidness and turned out a brainless jem in the tradition of Airplane! or Kentucky Fried Movie, I would have been all for it.  Instead, it half-asses an inconsequential plot and winds up making only about half the jokes it probably should have.

Take Me Home Tonight

I would like to point out that none of the characters in Take Me Home Tonight actually ever wear any of the costumes shown in this movie poster.  That's not a big deal, by any means, but it's a telling detail.  I'm not a big fan of movies that arbitrarily take place in the past, just because the filmmakers want to poke fun at out of date fashion or ideas.  It's a cheap, lazy storytelling convention that lends itself to a lot of predictable moments.  I wonder if there's going to be someone with a Flock of Seagulls haircut or a Frankie Goes to Hollywood reference?  There is?!?  Shock and awe: that is what I feel right now.

Take Me Home Tonight doesn't have to take place in the 80s, but it does.  Matt (Topher Grace), his twin sister, Wendy (Anna Faris), and Dan's lifelong best friend, Barry (Dan Fogler) are all at a crossroads in their lives.  Matt graduated from MIT, but has spent the summer working at Suncoast Video in the mall (I remember those!  I got my Sonny Chiba 10-pack there!) because he has no idea what he wants to do, and he doesn't want to be a failure.  Movie characters: they're just like real people!

Suck it up, Matt.  We've all been that guy, arms down in the crowd.

Wendy has been dating Matt's antithesis, Kyle (Chris Pratt), for years, and they are finally preparing to move in together; Wendy might have been accepted by Cambridge's master's program, though, which wouldn't fit Kyle's vision for their life.  Barry didn't go to college and became a car salesman instead.  On the day that Barry gets fired, Kyle proposes to Wendy, and Matt is given the opportunity to hit on the high school crush that he never had the guts to approach back in the day.  What, your life events don't precisely coincide with those of your friends and family?  Suck it, loser!  The bulk of the film focuses on Matt's attempts to get Tori's (Teresa Palmer) phone number, with a little time spent on Barry catching up on his missed college years and Wendy realizing how annoying Kyle is.  How does Matt impress his dream girl?  By lying to her, of course.  Believe it or not, that lie puts him in several tough situations, with somewhat humorous consequences.

"My name...?  Henry.  Henry...Suncoast-Video."

This is not a movie that will surprise you. It hits all the basic 80's touchstones that you expect (cocaine, break dancing, soulless capitalism, Dexy's Midnight Runners, etc.) and the characters are all pretty stock.  You mean that the main character and his best friend aren't the cool kids?  And the main character has trouble talking to girls?  What kind of world do we live in?!?  Yes, the movie is pretty predictable.  Yes, the characters are fairly shallow.  If you're willing to accept that --- and I totally understand if you are not --- there is a surprisingly entertaining movie buried underneath all the gimmicky, cliched crap.

A movie with high school friends having pivotal conversations in a car?  How avant garde!

Let's plow through the acting first.  Topher Grace is as awkward and goofy as ever, and he doesn't really change anything up here.  I don't know why he seems to feel most comfortable with characters set in easily identifiable decades, but whatever, it's his career.  Seriously, though, somebody should introduce him to Woody Allen and give him some challenging roles.  Anna Faris, despite being the second biggest name in the cast, has a relatively small role in the film.  I'm not a fan of most of her work, but she was fine as a not-funny character.  Dan Fogler, who I assumed I would be annoyed with in this movie, was surprisingly funny at times.  He didn't do anything too unpredictable or unusual, but he committed to all the stupidest parts in this movie and did his best to make them seem (somewhat) plausible.  Honestly, I was shocked to find myself laughing at some of his bits; I like to think that is a major compliment to him.  Teresa Palmer had a lot less to work with, since a large part of her role was to be an object of desire, but she wasn't annoying and handled the dramatic moments fairly well.

The supporting cast was largely just caricatures, but what else do you expect with a movie that aligns itself so strongly to a decade?  Chris Pratt was a great douchebag character, as usual.   Michael Biehn was a welcome surprise as Matt's semi-unsympathetic father, even if his inclusion in an 80's-themed movie was kind of a gimmick.  Michelle Trachtenberg was underused as an oversexed goth chick, but I'm not really sure if she's talented or not, so maybe she was used enough.  Comedian Demetri Martin was okay as a jerk paraplegic, but it wasn't the raucous bit role that the script clearly intended it to be.  Similarly, Michael Ian Black and Bob Odenkirk contributed almost nothing in their supporting roles.  On the bright side, aging supermodel and former Mrs. Stallone, Angie Everhart, has a topless and creepy sex scene with Dan Fogler. 

Because this is plausible.

Director Michael Dowse isn't particularly well-known for his subtle or thoughtful films.  In fact, this is his highest-profile movie to date, so I guess he's not particularly well-known for anything.  I wasn't impressed by Dowse.  His camera work is pretty standard.  If he has a good rapport with the actors, it wasn't apparent, since several comedic actors (with varying degrees of talent) were not very funny in this movie.  The thing that bugged me most about Dowse's direction is how lopsided this movie is.  The first half-hour is bad.  If you can get past the initial thirty minutes of trite plotting, lame jokes, and poor comic timing, the rest of the movie is kind of cute.  But having that obstacle --- one that will understandably stop many viewers --- is proof of how poorly this film was directed.

"Damn!  Sick burn!"

If you can get past the awful, Take Me Home Tonight has some surprisingly good parts.  Topher Grace has a few moments of sincerity that hint at dramatic potential he hasn't come close to realizing yet.  Dan Fogler, while fat and obnoxious, works well off the joke; I didn't usually laugh at what he said, but I liked his reactions to things.  I thought that the main plot, while very predictable, was well-acted and believable.  And there is one joke about the LAPD that I really, really liked.  I should also point out that the 80's pop culture references are not nearly as frequent as I assumed they would be.  Is that enough to recommend this movie?  Maybe, maybe not.  If you, like me, hate romantic comedies, this is a fairly pain-free (after the first third of the movie) option. 

...and here is the decently amusing music video of a terrible cover of an 80's song I don't like, featuring the cast of Take Me Home Tonight.