Wet Hot American Summer

The last day of summer 1981 at an American summer camp. The counsellors are trying to sort something out, confess to someone or at least get laid before the night ends. The film imitates eighties camp comedies exactly and pushes their shapes to the most absurd place available. David Wain directed and wrote it with Michael Showalter. Its production history is funnier than the film. Raising the money took three years and the budget stopped at 1.8 million dollars. The cast was paid almost nothing; Paul Rudd has said he is not sure he was paid at all. Shooting ran twenty-eight days in May 2000 at Camp Towanda in Pennsylvania and, by Wain's account, it rained on every single day. Scenes were shot under umbrellas or moved indoors, and in the exteriors you can see the actors' breath. It played to sold-out screenings at Sundance in 2001 and still could not find a distributor. USA Films eventually bought it for 100,000 dollars and released it in fewer than thirty cities. The box office was 295,206 dollars. The reviews were bad: 39 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from 77 reviews, and one star from Ebert. Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly gave it an A and put it among the ten best films of the year. What followed was different. It built a devoted cult; Kristen Bell has said she has watched it hundreds of times. Netflix made two series, First Day of Camp in 2015 and Ten Years Later in 2017, with most of the original cast in both. Who it is for: viewers who like absurd humour and eighties pastiche. Who it is not for: anyone who needs jokes to be consistent. The film abandons logic on purpose, and the register does not land for everyone.