4 gibbles out of 5
Director: David Wain
WHAS is recognizable to any State fan… but not immediately. Back in the day, MTV had a sketch comedy show on late at night (after the music videos that they used to play blah blah blah) called The State. It could be mixed bag of strange and hilarious, but it was rarely uninteresting and it was always 100% more inventive than what most sketch TV had to offer, then and now. When The State went off the air, members resurfaced here and there, but it wasn’t until Wet Hot American Summer – where the whole crew reappeared, including show director / editor David Wain – that it seemed like we might get a proper followup.
And it happens, but only after making you believe that this might be an actual movie. To a casual viewer that could make the weirdness seem out of left field, but it was totally a payoff worth waiting for for State fans.
Janeane Garofalo is a camp counselor. It’s the last day of camp. She’s fallen for guy-who-lives-next-to-camp David Hyde Pierce. Everyone else works at the camp. For all intents and purposes, it starts as a Dazed and Confused last-days kinda setup, where we float around the camp and meet our principles, learning their motivations (which are generally geared toward hooking up), and then letting the various plot lines play out at their own pace. After a few pleasant jokes and a few risque jokes, one starts to wonder. If this some kind of pre-Apatow adult dramedy nonsense? It can’t be, because everyone is clearly over-acting (which was a State staple move). And yet, it all seems rather innocent thus far.
Until the full-on gay sequence with Michael Showalter and Bradley Cooper. Until the camp counselors go into town for a half hour and do every drug imaginable, then return to camp no worse for wear. Until Christopher Meloni (such an under-utilized comedic talent… perhaps post Law and Order he’ll stretch his wings) fondles sweaters and talks to a can of beans. Which talks back. It’s a pretty good wait, but about halfway through the film the stupid insanity beneath the surface is unleashed, and we can appreciate what the crew was aiming for. The movie itself ends up not being of much consequence, of course, but the patience with which the project is put together makes this a much more successful return of a sketch comedy troupe than the Kids in the Hall movie, or the recent movie effort of Tim and Eric.
It also shows director Wain’s actual craft as a filmmaker, as the pitch is maintained at a perfect level for the comedy, and the scenes floating between parody and necessity for the shooting style. It’s nothing flashy, but at the same time, there’s personality behind the lens that makes the entire movie watchable and not just the laughs.
If that doesn’t seem like a four gibble review I apologize. WHAS is a fairly average movie. If you bill it as hilarious to your friends, they might get bored after the first 30 minutes. But it deserves extra notice for being willing to break its own barriers and for actually hitting the comedic tone that Apatow’s crew seems to want, but is unable to achieve.
This is the Meloni we want.
vaguely-offensive 