Wet Hot American Summer

It feels like a long-standing embarrassment that I had never seen Wet Hot American Summer. And the longer I put it off, the harder it became to watch — like an undergrad paper already past its deadline. It wasn't even a worry that I wouldn't like it, but a sense that everything the movie had to offer I had already consumed in some other form or fashion, in the various spiritual sequels and films its stars went off to make. I was wrong, obviously, and I loved it. I loved it in much the same way I loved They Came Together, which is essentially the same film with a slightly different cast. Where They Came Together skewered rom-coms, this one makes fun of teen movies. These films are not well-reviewed in the same way a particularly good episode of Saturday Night Live in its heyday would not be well-reviewed: part of the appeal is vibes and volume. It is easy, perhaps, to focus too much on the jokes that don't land, as opposed to the ones that do. For my part, what the movie feels like is…