Wet Hot American Summer (2001)

Set on the last day of camp, in the hot summer of 1981, a group of counselors try to complete their unfinished business before the day ends.

Director:

David Wain

Writers:

Michael Showalter, David Wain

Stars:

Janeane Garofalo, David Hyde Pierce, Michael Showalter

1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Janeane Garofalo	...	Beth
David Hyde Pierce	...	Henry Newman
Michael Showalter	...	Gerald 'Coop' Cooperberg / Alan Shemper
Marguerite Moreau	...	Katie
Michael Ian Black	...	McKinley
Zak Orth	...	J.J.
A.D. Miles	...	Gary
Paul Rudd	...	Andy
Christopher Meloni	...	Gene
Molly Shannon	...	Gail von Kleinenstein
Ken Marino	...	Victor Kulak
Joe Lo Truglio	...	Neil
Amy Poehler	...	Susie
Bradley Cooper	...	Ben
Gideon Jacobs	...	Aaron

Storyline

The setting is Camp Firewood, the year 1981. It's the last day before everyone goes back to the real world, but there's still a summer's worth of unfinished business to resolve. At the center of the action is camp director Beth, who struggles to keep order while she falls in love with the local astrophysics professor. He is busy trying to save the camp from a deadly piece of NASA's Skylab which is hurtling toward earth. All that, plus: a dangerous waterfall rescue, love triangles, misfits, cool kids, and talking vegetable cans. The questions will all be resolved, of course, at the big talent show at the end of the day.

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Plot Keywords:

love | waterfall | astrophysics | nasa | skylab | 

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Taglines:

It was the last day of summer camp. It was the first day of the third week in August.

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Genres:

Comedy | Romance

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for strong sexual content, language and a drug sequence

Details

Official Sites:

Eureka Pictures

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

11 April 2002 (Czech Republic)

Also Known As:

Gyagyák a gatyában, avagy tudom, kit fűztél tavaly nyáron

Filming Locations:

Honesdale, Pennsylvania, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$5,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

$17,481 (USA) (27 July 2001)

Gross:

$292,102 (USA) (5 October 2001)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Eureka Pictures, North Coast Group

Technical Specs

Runtime:

97 min

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

Although called wet hot, the credits thank the crew for surviving a cold, wet Pennsylvania spring. You can also see the actors' breaths at points during the movie.

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Goofs

Katie's necklace while Katie and Beth talk on the porch about improving Beth's look.

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Quotes

Katie: Listen, Coop - last night was really great. You were incredibly romantic and heroic, no doubt about it. And that's great. But I've thought about it, and my thing is this: Andy is really hot. And don't get me wrong, you're cute too, but Andy is like, *cut*. From marble. He's gorgeous. He has this beautiful face and this incredible body, and I genuinely don't care that he's kinda lame. I don't even care that he cheats on me. And I like you more than I like Andy, Coop, but I'm 16. And maybe it'll ...

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Crazy Credits

After the credits is a "10 years later" epilogue.

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Connections

Referenced in Role Models (2008)

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Soundtracks

"Wet Hot American Supper"
Written and Performed by Craig Wedren

User Reviews

"It's fun to get away from the camp, even if it's just for an hour."

The strangest point in this film is a point, about a half hour through, when all of the seemingly normal camp counselors go out in to the city. In a montage shot, they slowly go from reading books at the library, to smoking cigarettes, to smoking joints, to buying cocaine from a guy on the street, to becoming prostitutes, then becoming strung out heroin-addicts at the local crack house. This is not your parent's parody movie.

From this point on, the film is never the same. Seemingly normal character development goes out the window, and characters jump from one complete different personality to another within seconds. We get brilliant lines of dialogue that could only be brought from members of The State, like: "Hey, there's a problem. I've got something I need to tell you." "Oh no! You have crabs." "No. Well, yeah, but that's not the problem." "Oh good."

Pure genius!!! Why don't more comedies have lines of dialogue like this?

Some other great points: "There is a way we could save everyone's lives. Well, no that couldn't work. In order for it to work, we would need to have a device that could randomly generate numbers between 1 and 20." "That's impossible. That would take some sort of highly advanced supercomputer to work." "Not necessarily. No dungeon master goes anywhere without his...20 sided die."

I sort of wish I had known what films were being parodied in this movie. I saw strands that sort of matched what I had seen from old Summer Camp movies I had seen back in high school during the wee hours in the morning during comedy central. But, there were many things here that seemed like they must be references to other films. Oh well. It's just all crazy.

Anyway, I guess I should say that this isn't a really good...movie, per se, but...well, I have no excuses for it. Wet Hot American Summer rules! Dolphins suck it!!!