GALLERY
BUY: DVD / poster
RELEASED: 27 July 2001
CAST
McKinley … Michael Ian Black
Ben … Bradley Cooper
Beth … Janeane Garofalo
Victor Kulak … Ken Marino
Gene … Christopher Meloni
Katie … Marguerite Moreau
J.J. … Zak Orth
Henry Newman … David Hyde Pierce
Susie … Amy Poehler
Andy … Paul Rudd
Gail von Kleinenstein … Molly Shannon
Gerald ‘Coop’ Cooperberg / Alan Shemper … Michael Showalter
Neil … Joe Lo Truglio
SYNOPSIS
Wet Hot American Summer is a low-budget porno movie that David starred in back before he hit the big time, where we get to see his … oh wait, no, it’s actually just a comedy. Sorry folks!
It’s a good one though. Set in 1981, the movie chronicles the last day of summer camp at Camp Firewood. Deliciously parodical, it spoofs more eighties teen movie clichés you can shake a stick at. Hormones are running high and every camper is trying to find that someone special before the big talent show. It has everything from gay sex to talking vegetables.
Cleverly stupid or stupidly clever? We can’t quite decide. The humour is hit-and-miss and some of the references will probably fly right by you if you’re not of that generation, but when it works, it really works.
DAVID’S ROLE
David plays Associate Professor Henry Newman, an expert in astrophysics and all-round nerd. Think Niles with glasses, a dodgy moustache and a filthy mouth. He and Janeane Garofalo play wonderfully off each other and provide some of the most memorable moments in the movie.
Henry is, in fact, the hero of the piece, saving the campers from a renegade piece of SkyLab from the Nasa space station heading straight for the camp. No, really.
CRITICAL RESPONSE
“Hello, Muddah, Hello, Faddah – Here I am at Wet Hot American Summah. Wow, I hate it. Something fierce. Except the astrophysicist David Hyde Pierce.” – Robert Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
“It’s especially helpful that the acting is great all around, especially from Garofalo and Pierce.” - Pete Croatto, FilmCritic.com
“David Hyde Pierce essentially plays his Frasier role all over again, as a slightly stuck up, slightly insane intellectual type.” - Chris Parry, eFilmCritic
“The biggest measure of the film’s comic poverty is that the filmmakers have cast David Hyde Pierce – who, in his work as Niles on Frasier, does some of the most talented farce acting any actor has accomplished in the last few years – as a scientist who becomes smitten with Janeane Garofalo, and for material they’ve given him exclamations like ‘Fuck my dick!’* when things go wrong.” - Charles Taylor, Salon.com
*The line is actually “Fuck my cock!” But never mind. It’s funny either way.
BEST BITS
- There’s a wonderful moment at the beginning of the movie where Beth (Garofalo) is introducing herself to Henry. She sticks out her hand and instead of shaking it, he hands her the trowel he was just using. It’s gloriously awkward and cute and reflects their socially inept yet loving relationship.
- When Henry and Beth are in the library, she looking up astrophysics and he looking up camp directing in a bid to impress the other with their knowledge later on. Very silly and adorable.
- Henry and Beth are walking. Henry asks her to meet him at the picnic table in ten seconds so he can tell her something. Beth waits for ten seconds and then walks two steps to discover a picnic table that has suddenly materialised.
- Henry runs up to Beth, holding his newly-won Hopkins award trophy. As he’s talking, he very obviously hands the trophy to a crew member offscreen.
- Henry doing mathematical calculations mid-air. Watching this, we can’t help thinking that David would have made a wonderful mime artist.
- The ridiculous machine that Henry invents to save the camp from the piece of SkyLab hurtling towards it. It’s basically an old rubbish bin with things like donuts and cereal boxes and weird silvery transmitter aerial thingys stuck to it. There’s even a tin of Spam!
BEST LINES
BETH: Hey, you know what? You know what would be a great idea if you came by the camp and taught the campers about space.
HENRY: No, no I couldn’t.
BETH: Oh, they’d love it.
HENRY: No, I couldn’t possibly.
BETH: Oh, it’d just be so…
HENRY: [yelling] I SAID NO!
“Excuse me, could you tell me where I could find the uh … how do I put this, the sci-fi, nerdy … the indoor kids?”
CAPED KID: What are you looking at? Is there a UFO in the sky?
HENRY: No. No. It’s nothing you need worry about … yet.
HENRY: Hey, Beth. Like the new look. Tres chic.
BETH: Thank you Henry.
HENRY: Please, call me Henry.
BETH: Okay. Henry it is.
HENRY: Excuse me, Nancy. Say I wanted to get a book on um …
NANCY: What?
HENRY: Camp directing I guess. Would that be … [shrugs]
NANCY: Henry, Henry. Library.
HENRY: Ooh! Thank you.
HENRY: [demonstrating with rocks] See, this is us and we’re travelling around the sun. That’s a 1.3 million mile trip every year! You might say that each and every one of us is a crew member here on Spaceship Earth.
CAMPER: When will we say that?
HENRY: Any time. Dinner. Literally any time.
GIRL: You’re amazing. I hope that when I grow up I can come to your college and you can be my professor.
HENRY: Well actually I’m just an associate professor.
MELVIN: What does that mean?
GIRL: Melvin!
HENRY: No no, it’s alright. It means Melvin … it means that I’m … less than.
[Group hugs him and they all cry.]
BETH: Hey, what’s going on?
HENRY: Hey Beth. We’re just having ourselves a little cry.
HENRY: Oh, I think we’ll take a rain check, Beth. We’re in the middle of some pretty interesting stuff here.
BETH: I’ll make you a deal. You come watch the Capture the Flag game with the normal kids and then you can have the whole rest of the day to learn about planets, stars, pulsars, heliocentricity, gravitational collapse and the science of celestial mechanics, as shown through the work of the nineteenth-century scientists Alexis Claraut, Jean de Lambert and Pierre Laplace. Okay?
KIDS: Okay!
BETH: Ready? Break!
HENRY: Gee, I was really impressed with some of the stuff you said back there.
BETH: Oh, it was …
HENRY: No, no Beth, you know what you’re talking about. I don’t know where you find the time to learn about astrophysics. Camp insurance and payroll to deal with, keeping the parents happy, supervising a young staff, keeping everyone fed. It was in 1908 that the first American summer camps were founded …
BETH: Hey you, penny for your thoughts.
HENRY: Beth, tomorrow is the least of our problems.
BETH: Don’t tell me, Oh don’t tell me, don’t even tell me you have crabs!
HENRY: No… Yes, but that’s not the point.
DVD EXTRAS
A pretty decent collection – an audio commentary by Janeane Garofalo, deleted scenes, a behind-the-scenes segment, and more.
There’s a very cute camp reunion scene, in which we learn that Beth and Henry are now married with a kid, and Henry has ditched the moustache and acquired a bowler hat and pipe in its stead. Then they all watch porn, Henry informing his daughter: “That’s the penis!” Trust us, it’s funny.
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