Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp

The clear passage of time for so many others is part of the larger absurd joke that made the movie such a treat, and that makes First Day of Camp a lot of fun, even if stretching out a 97-minute movie concept to around four hours (I've seen six of the eight episodes) leads to a more uneven overall comedy.

Their new series leans far too heavily on explaining, altering and recreating old jokes rather than providing new laughs based on the same creative spirit that made the film a cult classic.

With a cast expanded to include tons of popular comedic performers, First Day of Camp is frequently funny, even when its jokes don’t amount to much. Fans of the movie will probably watch it over and over again, making Netflix executives very happy. Everyone else will remain baffled.

It will help to have at least a high tolerance for profane, scatological and sexual comedy and not to mind bad words spoken by actual children. (That the juvenile humor is appropriate to the characters provides cover for the adult exercise of juvenile humor.) This may not be for you. At the same time much of the comedy is quiet, settled in lines that just turn in odd ways.

It's a prequel in which actors now in their 40s portray teenagers. And in the oddest move of all, it's actually good.

The series actually improves on the movie. This is consistently funnier, weirder and more inventive.

First Day of Camp does not disappoint--mainly because it's more of the same.

Fans of the original are likely to enjoy this follow-up, which improves in succeeding episodes after the somewhat lackluster first entry and those who scratched their heads at the movie are likely to have the same reaction to this prequel series.

Even if the entire rhythm isn’t quite there, the moments pile up.

The eight episodes together make for just four hours of television, which is only a bit longer than a very long movie; the natural breaks of title sequences and credits serve to break up the gleefully disjointed adventures into bookended chapters. And because making a prequel series 15 years later with the same actors set on just one day is patently ridiculous, the style of humor that Showalter and his longtime collaborator David Wain bring to Wet Hot American Summer: First Day Of Camp is spot-on: It embraces that absurdity, and pushes it to every possible extreme.

It may be “Wet, Lukewarm American Summer,” but it’s perfect mindless entertainment to warm up your own American summer.

First Day of Camp’s success depends on your love for the original film and your willingness to sit through some comedic dry spells before you hit a gusher. It isn’t Old Faithful. It’s just a chance to rekindle old times.

The series ultimately feels like a nostalgia trip, less for the era in which it's set than for the original film that spawned it.

The episodes unfurl in an excess of good-natured silliness.

Wain and Showalter mostly acquit themselves, and for every dud plotline (“Coop’s” romantic flailings are actually more of a drag this time out) there’s a correspondingly uproarious one.

The shaggy humor is amusing enough.

But nobody should watch Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp for plot. Instead, just park the questioning part of your brain, sit back and revel in the silliness of these terrific performers fooling around.

The 8-episode series (only six episodes were made available to critics) mostly succeeds by sheer force of will. The viewers are so bombarded by jokes that something is bound to tickle you eventually-–though truth be told it may take awhile.

Fortunately, as reminders of one’s inexorable mortality go, First Day of Camp is good fun. Like the original (set on the last day of summer camp), it’s a machine constructed of pop parodies and well-curated period references (“He’s a total fox, like a young Larry Wilcox!”) that conceals an actual beating heart.

They have more than enough laugh out loud moments to justify this completely unexpected return trip to Camp Firewood, circa the summer of 1981.

David Wain and Michael Showalter's quirky brand of comedy is still the heart of the series, and works because it is so youthfully rudimentary, playing up romantic comedy tropes with bratty sneers and whimsy. First Day at Camp is essential summer TV viewing nobody asked for, but nobody's complaining either.