It’s been about 14 years since the last day of Camp Firewood’s 1981 season. Eh, that’s not totally accurate. It’s been 14 years since cult comedy Wet Hot American Summer opened to a cavalcade of negative reviews and rejection from a public unwilling or unprepared to jibe with its combination of absurdism and hyper-specific pop-culture parody. (Most memorably, Roger Ebert savaged it in a rhyming-verse spoof of “Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh.”) But the film’s reputation has changed radically in the decade-and-change since its quiet and violent death in a small handful of theaters in major cities.
For one, a number of its performers have grown significantly more famous than this offbeat lark would have foreshadowed. Seeing pre-SNL Amy Poehler’s drama-class dictator viciously exclaim, “I’d just like to say that the campers you’re about to see SUCK DICK!” is almost as fun as seeing a pre-everything Bradley Cooper completely sell the most intimate scene of queer love in comedy history. The film’s Midas touch also extended to a few then-nobodies named Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, and H. Jon Benjamin. But the film itself has ascended to the uppermost tier of comedy-nerd heaven, a secret password between those who get it and those who don’t. (The one true test of a new relationship is breaking off a steamy makeout sesh by saying, “You taste like a burger. I don’t like you anymore.” If your partner laughs and returns with, “The phone, the phone, where’s the fucking phone?!” then what you have is real. If not, you were better off in the first place.)
There have been demands for a sequel, a TV show, please just something more for years now, but a new report from Deadline provides the confirmation that scores of indoor kids have waited for. It appears that Netflix has penciled in an eight-episode engagement with a Wet Hot American Summer TV show into its gournal—er, journal. The series will gather all the recognizable faces from Camp Firewood’s ’81 season, though the decade-long interim could complicate matters. At 45, Rudd’s a little long in the tooth to play a teen heartthrob. But hey, being 30 sure didn’t stop all those actors from playing kids the first time around, and perhaps the visible age disparity could be played for laughs once again.
With the assemblage of talent at hand, it’s hard to believe this could be anything other than a smash. But both the latest project from the State-alum braintrust and Netflix’s last attempt to resurrect an enshrined modern comedy (They Came Together and Arrested Development, respectively) were met with polarized reviews. Perhaps it is director David Wain’s destiny to forever play the Van Gogh, unappreciated in his own time. Either way, it’s time to get the fondling sweaters out of mothballs.
And of course, no article about Wet Hot American Summer is complete without a link to the afternoon in town: