WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER

Hell officially freezes over, as the hoity-toity Cleveland International Film Festival hosts a goofball screen satire that pays affectionate tribute to that most disreputable of B-picture schlock genres, the summer-camp teen-sex- and slob-sploitation comedy – and don't even pretend to tell us that you've never watched one, or didn't babble about it the next day in the school locker room. Such lowbrow youth-movie fare multiplied like poison ivy weeds in the pre-John Hughes era, under the aesthetic influence of “Porky's” and National Lampoon wannabes. Now, just when you thought “Up the Creek” had faded into oblivion, forces quite beyond your self-control will tug-of-war you into the hijinks at Camp Firewood, circa 1981. Here horny counselors, hormonal minors, dangerous rapids, talking vegetable cans, nerds, jocks, nymphets and a tumbing space station add up to more and smarter laughs than all those rancid “Meatballs” sequels put together. In an epochal confluence of Cleveland-area talent, onetime Shaker Heights residents David Wain (debuting director), Craig Wedren (composer), and Molly Shannon (comedienne) bunk alongside Janeane Garofalo and David Hyde Pierce, and everyone will be a happy camper.