Netflix's Original Series 'Wet Hot American Summer First Day of Camp' Success?

Netflix's Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp premiered July 31st and it is rip-roaringly funny. Many of the original cast has returned for the reboot like Paul Rudd, Janeane Garofalo, Elizabeth Banks, Amy Poehler, Bradley Cooper, Michael Ian Black, Christopher Meloni, Marguerite Moreau, Joe Lo Truglio and Molly Shannon--just to name a few. This show is jam-packed with some of our favorite comedians and watching 30 and 40-somethings play high schoolers is quite ridiculous at first, but might even heighten the jokes and the dynamic. You can tell that everyone working on the show is having a great time. LA Times says, "[Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp] dances gaily along the fine line between stupid and clever, 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." The Daily Beast even says, "Watching First Day of Camp is like putting together the doofus-y, imbecilic, and therefore regressively hilarious puzzle pieces that make up the big set pieces in the first movie 14 years before. Puzzles, it turns out, are a great camp activity." You can't take the show too seriously, and it riffs on a lot of film stereotypes so much so that it is reminiscent of comedies from the 70s and 80s like Airplane, Kentucky Fried Movie, Naked Gun or a serial Saturday Night Live skit.

The original film did not receive a great numbers at the box office and 14 years later is quite the cult classic. Variety says, "The summer-camp satire, set in 1981, floundered in limited release. But word-of-mouth, special screenings and the ever-rising profile of its cast cultivated a rabid fanbase." However, in the day and age of nostalgic reboots like Girl Meets World coming to the Disney Channel and Fuller House shortly coming to Netflix as well, Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp could really succeed! Check out the official trailer and tune into Netflix now to watch the full season.