If history has taught us anything, it’s that there’s no easier way to make a profitable film than to shoot a teen sex romp for about $3 million, advertise it like crazy on MTV to ensure a big opening weekend and then let it die.

“American Pie 2” and “Out Cold” are the most recent adherents to this formula, and both made tons of money. Which brings me to “Wet Hot American Summer,” the directorial debut of former “The State” cast member David Wain.

Unlike either of the above flicks, “Wet Hot” is funny. Unfortunately, it wasn’t hyped on MTV, and its distribution was so bad that the only Chicago theater it played in was the Music Box. It got treated like an indie film, so nobody saw it. Fortunately, it just came out on video, and it’s finally getting the attention it missed out on the first time around.

The movie tells the story of the final day of summer at Camp Firewood, a seething cauldron of hormones run by a hippie named Beth (Janeane Garafalo) and her staff of zany teen-aged counselors. “Wet Hot” is a partial reunion of “The State,” with cast members Michael Showalter, Michael Ian Black, Joe Lo Truglio and Ken Marino also contributing. Like that much-missed show, “Wet Hot” is often hysterically funny, but the idea of coherence is largely ignored.

The hero of our story is Coop (Showalter), a sensitive, funny guy with a bowl cut who wants nothing more in the entire world than to get with Katie (Marguerite Moreau, best known as Connie in the “Mighty Ducks” movies), who is tragically in love with Andy (Paul Rudd), the scummy lifeguard who is sleeping with half of the women at the camp.

That’s just the dominant storyline, of course. The other storylines are that …

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