Reception
The film received mostly negative reviews from critics; as of April 2007, it has a 42/100 rating on Metacritic and a 31% on Rotten Tomatoes, with an 11% rating from their "Cream of the Crop" critics. Notably, Roger Ebert rated the film with one star out of four, and despised it so much that his review took the form of a sarcastic tribute to Allan Sherman's Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh.
In contrast, Entertainment Weekly's Owen Gleiberman awarded the film an "A" and named it as one of the ten best films of the year. Newsweek's David Ansen also lauded it, calling it a "gloriously silly romp" that "made me laugh harder than any other movie this summer. Make that this year." Numerous other critics have praised the film as a witty pop satire and it has gone on to achieve a cult following.
The film has been much more popular with the general public than critics, currently holding a favorable user rating on fansites such as IMDb and the Rotten Tomatoes community, with an average rating of 84% based on over 34,000 user ratings.
Kristen Bell stated, on NPR on September 2, 2012, that this was her favorite film of all time, having watched it " . . . hundreds of times."
Read more about this topic: Wet Hot American Summer
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“To the United States the Third World often takes the form of a black woman who has been made pregnant in a moment of passion and who shows up one day in the reception room on the forty-ninth floor threatening to make a scene. The lawyers pay the woman off; sometimes uniformed guards accompany her to the elevators.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion.... Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away and there is no longer art.”
—Rémy De Gourmont (1858–1915)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)