Cruel critics hated your favorite comedy movies

Now showing: Sweet, sweet vengeance.No, not Liam Neeson’s latest brooding thriller. I’m talking about a movie that was once mercilessly hammered by critics and is now being re-released nationally for seven days.A triumphant return to the big screen. Usually such an event is reserved for “Lawrence of Arabia” or “Star Wars” or “Spirited Away” — not a flop. The underdog victor this time, our Wacky Balboa, is “Wet Hot American Summer,” the cult summer-camp comedy that’s celebrating its 25th anniversary.A quarter century ago, nobody would’ve predicted a future feting of the deranged satire’s legacy.

It was supposed to be forgotten.Wiped from the cultural consciousness.

Like many dinky Sundance premieres, “Wet Hot” seemed destined for obscurity.Reviewers, at the peak of their power and influence, gave the little indie a drubbing.My Post predecessor Lou Lumenick awarded the flick, starring young Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler and Bradley Cooper, two stars and declared, “What the world doesn’t need now is an homage to Bill Murray’s summer-camp hit ‘Meatballs’.”Roger Ebert was even meaner.

He gave it a measly one star and wrote a dismissive takedown in the style of the song “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh.”“Wow I hate it something fierce – except the astrophysicist David Hyde Pierce,” the Chicago Sun-Times critic rhymed.Not that RottenTomatoes.com is a scientific measure, but “Wet Hot” shares the same score as last year’s reviled live-action “Snow White” — 39%.Hard to picture that Disney dud ever being revived.And yet here “Wet Hot” is again selling tickets and getting laughs.This tussle of taste between critics and mainstream audiences is actually quite normal — frustratingly for some — especially when it comes to comedy.Many popular, hilarious favorites, noticeably in the 1990s and aughts, were smacked down as unsophisticated, stupid and gross upon release.

You know, that old critical chestnut — “soph...