Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later

Horrible. If there is anything i have learned about new TV series' its that the pilot has to be a killer episode to get the viewers hooked for the rest of the series or at the least the next episode. I watched the first episode on netflix and could not wait to remove it from 'my list'. It attempts to draw humour from the daggy 90's references and style but the jokes just fall very short. In the first episode i laughed twice and one of those was a little forced, trying to influence my mind to find it funny but to no avail.

I have not seen the original movie or any other of the franchise so i do not know if the corny brady bunch style acting is supposed to be part of the humour but it didn't do it for me.

Don't waste your time with this one.

Showalter is a genius, a genius! Just thigh slapping, tear-jerking laughs throughout that won't stop.

My only complaint, and it's a biggie: Janeane Garofalo's HORRID cosmetic surgery. She looks as if she is a face-transplant survivor, you've seen them, they get some cadaver's face onto their own, and it just hangs there perpetually suspended and creepy. Well, that's what Garofalo's face looks like. It was so distracting, in every scene she's in I could do nothing but gape at her awful poor face. I don't think she was capable of making any expression except stunned apathy- if that is an emotion, that's hers. Her mouth is like Mr. Toads in a perpetual frown. In the very last episode, she manages to grin!! How did that happen? She must have gotten some special anti-toxin injection, as it was the sole instant in the entire series where I saw her face other than deadpan.

Wow. Despite the great reviews, I found "First Day At Camp" to be beyond boring. In addition to being so distracting that everyone was clearly 20 years older, there was just nothing there.

I love that this movie said screw it and after starting with the cutesy satire of "where are they now" schtick early on, it is unashamed to just go off the rails. Disparate story lines that somehow connect together, ridiculous "cameos" and story lines, and just good fun all around.

One of the more pleasant surprises that I have had watching a TV show in a long time

Although not a masterpiece, the original movie from 2001 is a charming and entertaining one. It was funny. The sequels have been disappointing, with every installment progressively worse.

Everything about Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later screams "first draft". It's like they were spit balling in the writer's room saying "wouldn't it be funny if" and it never progressed beyond that step. I have witnessed that firsthand on comedy projects I have worked on where the writers are howling with laughter and slapping each other on the back, just to have everything fall flat when you shoot it and hand it over to the poor editor who is the one who has got to try and save it.

Perhaps one problem is that the core croup come out of sketch comedy via The State. There is no narrative flow to Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later. It's easier to mask that in a 90 minute movie, like the original, but when you stretch it for 8 episodes (or rather 16 episodes, since both Netflix shows have the same structure) it becomes quite tedious.

One show also made by people from The State that manage to pull this off beautifully is Reno 9/11 (one of my favorite shows). But the structure of that show (essentially a COPS parody) lends itself perfectly to the sketch format, it doesn't have the need for the same narrative flow that Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later aspires to.

But the cardinal sin with Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later is that it unlike the original movie, isn't very funny. Most ideas are half baked, and the actors are going through the motions. It didn't help that every time someone shouted "Walla-walla-hoo!" I wanted to kick their teeth in.

Perhaps the original movie was lightning in a bottle.

Have you ever seen someone tell one of their friends an inside joke that you weren't in on? That's this series for me. Clearly, the absurd characters are meant to be funny caricatures to begin with (especially with the wigs many are wearing), but they also say and do things that they believe are funny and sometimes other characters agree are hilarious. Maybe the joke is that they're idiots who find stupid things funny. I don't know. Maybe the entire series is a giant Andy Kaufman style joke on the viewers for watching and expecting humor.

I get that this was intended to be some sort of parody. Full disclosure, I have not seen the original movie or anything else from this franchise, but I can't imagine that affecting my opinion.

Humor is a subjective thing, so your experience may be different. This isn't a parody in line with Spaceballs, Scary Movie, Hot Shots, Galaxy Quest, Monty Python, or Tropic Thunder. It's not a style of humor like Groundhog Day or National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Best I can tell, it's a sophomoric, awkward grimace, dry, situational humor similar to that found in "The Office" but even less grounded in reality. It's that sort of thing that maybe some laugh at because the situation is so nervous and cringe-worthy. It's a dry humor, but not a witty humor like found in Monty Python and other British works.

There must be an audience for this type of thing. I'm guessing there's some overlap between people who enjoy this and people who watch the USA version of "The Office" and Napoleon Dynamite. Those being hits in the states, there must be those that would love this. Just not me.

I think it's either hit or miss with this style of comedy, and for me, it's a miss.