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.

Monsters vs. Aliens

I think the "versus" movie is a fantastic idea. When you explain exactly what the movie is about in the title, you don't have to waste unnecessary time developing characters or plot, and can just get on with the fight.  Freddy vs. Jason is, obviously, the best example of this, but there are a lot of good vs. match-ups out there.  Ninjas vs Pirates: The Movie, anyone?  Yes please!

Monsters vs. Aliens, for some unknown reason, chooses not to embrace its title and instead tries to tell a story.  Big mistake.  Instead of watching animated monsters fighting animated aliens, probably ripping their innards out and using them for jump rope, viewers are treated to the girl-power tale of Susan (voiced by Reese Witherspoon), as she learns (SPOILER!!!) that happiness does not come from living for others.  Susan, later dubbed Ginormica, is the submissive fiancee of local weatherman and swollen ego, Derek (Paul Rudd), until she is struck by a meteor on their wedding day. 

On a side note, I'd just like to say that, if you find a large object falling toward you, DO NOT turn around and run away.  You're still in the line of impact, and you might not have the best depth perception; instead, run perpendicular to the object's path and you will hopefully avoid any meteors heading your way.  You're welcome. 

Anyway, Susan became radioactive and turned into a giant.  Once again, movies prove science wrong by showing how a horrible accident inevitably leads to super powers.  Take that, science!  Susan is quickly subdued by the military and taken to a military complex that houses other monsters.  The other monsters are an amorphous blob, B.O.B. (Seth Rogen), a mad scientist with a cockroach's head and abilities, Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), a half-ape and half-amphibian evolutionary wonder, the Missing Link (Will Arnett), and a Chrysler Building-sized grub, Insectosaurus.  Susan is renamed Ginormica by the monsters' military liason, the R. Lee Ermy-esque General W.R. Monger (Keifer Sutherland) and is told that she is now a monster.  See, it's funny because she looks like a normal woman (albeit 100 feet tall) and they're calling her a monster.  Get it?  Well, the kids will.  Susan has a hard time accepting her new role, especially when she is told that monsters never leave their secret military complex.  Frowny face emoticon!  Things change quickly when the alien Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson) shows up to conquer the planet.  Well, that's just his secondary goal.  What Gallaxhar really wants is the radiation that Susan has absorbed; this will return her to normal, but will give him ultimate power.  Obviously, this leads to the monsters being released to fight the alien menace; through the power of fist-fighting, Susan learns the value of self-esteem and true friends.

This movie is co-directed by Conrad Vernon (Shrek 2) and Rob Letterman (Shark Tale), and you can identify elements of their previous work here.  My major problem with Dreamworks Animation's films is their lack of depth.  Sure, they're nice, light movies for little kids, but I like cartoons, too, man!  With Pixar making such amazing movies every year, Dreamworks' stuff often pales in comparison.  Here, we get a movie whose moral is basically that girls should have their own identity and not just be accessories to successful men.  Whoa...edgy!  This soft-sell of a tale is reminiscent of Letterman's Shark Tale' and its "lying is bad" moral.  On the bright side, Conrad Vernon's presence is felt, too.  One of the main reasons Shrek 2 is my favorite Shrek is because it is not afraid to just go for jokes.  Here, both Hugh Laurie and Seth Rogen are both used very well; neither really adds much to the plot, but both are decently funny whenever they get the chance (and I hate Rogen, so that's a huge compliment).  I think these joke characters (Insectosaurus is another) are really what work best in this movie.  It's just too bad they are sprinkled through a competent, but uninspired, main plot.

The animation in this movie is as good as you would expect.  While I have my own issues with Dreamworks Animation's stories, their movies always look great.  This movie was the first computer animated movie made in the new stereoscopic 3-D, but I just saw the 2-D version and it still looked good.

The voice acting is star-studded, but a little hit-and-miss.  Reese Witherspoon may or may not be a good choice as the main character; due to the story's strengths and weaknesses, she doesn't really get an opportunity to excel.  Hugh Laurie and Kiefer Sutherland might have been playing stock characters, but they did a great job diving into their roles; it is difficult to identify them in this film.  Seth Rogen and Rainn Wilson clearly had the most fun making this movie, and it shows.  It helps that their characters are both idiots, since that doesn't stretch their acting too far from their comfort zones.  Stephen Colbert was an inspired choice to play the President of the United States, but I was a little underwhelmed by the lines given to him; there's even a couple of minutes early on where his character is on screen, but has no dialogue.  What a waste!  The rest of the cast failed to impress me.  I didn't care for Will Arnett, as the Missing Link, in particular, but Paul Rudd, Amy Pohler, Julie White, Jeffrey Tambor, Ed Helms, Renee Zellweger, and John Krasinski all made brief and unmemorable appearances in the film.

I guess the bottom line here is how likable the movie is.  Kids will absolutely enjoy the movie.  B.O.B. plays for cheap laughs and his humor is aimed at the kids.  Adults will like some of the humor, sure (my favorite was Insectosaurus), but the story is saccharine enough to cause cavities.  There are certainly worse children's movies to watch, but I don't think this one has the all-ages appeal to make it a classic.