Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp

Our Review

The prequel to the 2001 cult film — with the now-40-plus original cast playing the same teenage campers and counselors, which is the entire joke and it never stops being funny. David Wain and Michael Showalter’s parody of ’80s summer-camp sex comedies plays every cliché straight while escalating into absurdism: a rock star (Chris Pine, pre-stardom, magnificent) hiding at camp, a toxic-waste canister subplot, a government lab under the camp, and the staff drama you remember from the movie.

The cast — Janeane Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce, Bradley Cooper, Amy Poehler, Elizabeth Banks, plus newcomers Michael Cera, Jon Hamm, Kristen Wiig — is a comedy all-star game. Eight episodes of escalating non-sequiturs and total commitment to bits (the talking can of vegetables!). The gags-per-minute rate is enormous; the dud rate is admirably low. It’s sketch comedy stretched into a serialized farce, and it works because everyone commits completely to material that knows it’s ridiculous.

Verdict: Watch it. The actors are older, the summer is younger, and it all somehow works.