Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later

10 Years Later doesn’t feel crowded, nor does it feel overly conditioned by what came before. Its devil-may-care attitude is aptly encompassed by these jokes and these actors.

A movie about a reunion that is itself a reunion. It is poignant not quite in spite of itself.

Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later is fun precisely because it seems to be flying by the seat of its early-’90s jeans, feeling free to do whatever it wants, any old time.

Overall, it’s broad, ridiculous, silly humor that isn’t as daring or progressive as some of the best comedies on TV but it works more often than it doesn’t.

Even if you aren’t part of the “Wet Hot American Summer” cult, this series should provide plenty of goofy, gonzo fun.

With Wet Hot American Summer: Ten Years Later, there are definitely barren stretches and the overall thinness of the narrative is, especially toward the end of the eight episodes, a part of the story itself. Being the worst of the Wet Hot American Summer entries is no disgrace and there's enough lunacy, inspiration and cleverness here that Ten Years Later at least makes for a fast binge.

It is, like First Day of Camp, very hit-or-miss. Some of the newbies never entirely click, while other relative latecomers (particularly Wain and Lake Bell as Hebrew-speaking lovers who rope Ken Marino’s muscular virgin Victor into solving their fertility issues) inject some fresh life into the proceedings given the absence of some characters and the diminishing returns of others.

The scatological jokes run high, while some of the action sequences are worthy of a C-level thriller.

Gone are dumb adolescent antics; replacing them are jokes about careerism, the fear of settling down, and the perils of being young parents. It’s as staid as it sounds, and the show isn’t helped by the fact that many jokes referencing the movie have only grown more stale.

While the cast is solid enough that it can sell almost anything, taking a third trip to Camp Firewood makes for a reunion that would’ve been best left to our imaginations.