Wet Hot American Summer: First Day Of Camp

[Henry Gale]

[Henry Gale]

As much as I've always been grateful to the 2001 original for it being something of a launching pad for so many people and eventual projects I loved (I was hugely into Stella before seeing it or any of The State, so my admiration of at least them three began there), I never exactly loved the movie.

BUT, I still have been looking forward to this for a while, and it was very much worth it as this series is pretty damn excellent and hysterical so far and I already have only three episodes left.

[Henry Gale]

Alright, done. Fantastic. My favourite of (what I've seen of) Netflix's output to date. Just a glorious four-hour endeavour in something no one ever thought was necessary or even possible, but here it is, and boy is it great.

Watch this already, everyone.

[Ezee E]

Yep. I was completely indifferent to the movie but I'm digging this.

[number8]

I don't love it as much as the movie, which was a satirical sex comedy with a healthy dressing of surreal jokes, whereas this prequel is driven by a madcap plot with some summer camp jokes padding it out; but I grew to like it more and more towards the end (Chris Pine's big finale definitely helped). I'm glad they kept the callbacks to a minimum, though I would have been disappointed if there weren't any callback to the pots breaking.

Some of the new additions worked, some didn't. Lake Bell, Jason Schwartzman, and Randall Park blended right in by playing the characters earnestly, which to me is what really worked about the movie. The people doing schticks like Cera, Wiig, and Hamm, were rather off-tone and felt misused. Not sure if that's their fault or if those characters just didn't feel like they should be here.

David Hyde Pierce's return was completely superfluous, ha.