Animal House (1978)

French title:
“American College”

Directed by: John Landis

Written by: Chris Miller III, Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney, John Hughes

Starring: John Belushi, Tim Matheson, Thom Hulce

Running Time: 1 hour, 49 minutes

Rating: R

Pre-Conceived Notions: I’ve reviewed a couple movies on here that were considered iconic films, such as Clerks (3 of 6 slices), The Exorcist (4 of 6 slices of pizza), Caddyshack (4 of 6 slices) and The Poseidon Adventure (6 of 6 slices), and have had mixed opinions on them. It makes me wonder why some movies are rocketed to the iconic film stratosphere, while other movies that are just as good—or better—don’t really do much of anything. Animal House is the seminal film that has inspired all other coming-of-age films featuring newly-free young adults with no boundaries. John Belushi is a genius, and this movie will live on forever. Or so the articles say. Bring on the Animal House madness. 

Why I Haven't Seen This Film: I haven’t written in this blog for literally months, and I am still tired of this question.

Bit-O-Trivia from the IMDb page: “As this was Kevin Bacon’s first role, when he went to the premiere, he wasn’t allowed to sit with the rest of the cast because the ushers didn’t believe he was in it. He had to sit in the back with everyone else.”

1 hour, 49 minutes later…: My favorite thing to do in here is pinpoint some WTF moments in the films I review. Maybe that will become a section of the blog from now on. Yes. I think it shall! With this film, it’s the scene where Bluto gets the ladder to spy on the sorority girls through their upstairs window. As he is climbing the ladder, he’s making as much noise as a portly Albanian comedy legend can make with a ladder, which is to say, a lot. And I was watching the whole thing going, “This is going to be good. They all are going to scream or push him off the ladder or something.” Nothing. Happens. And then when he sees Babs come in and go to her room, he hops the ladder across as loudly as possible to spy on Babs, who is facing the window as she’s taking her bra off. And she doesn’t notice him. Seriously? There was comedy gold here, and the only pay off was him passing out on the ladder?! Hashtag disappointing. 

I have a confession to make. I am starting to think my icon-dar is broken. I thought this movie was okay. There were some very funny parts, like every second of the cafeteria scene. Especially the, “I’m a zit.” sequence. And when Babs is jerking off Greg in the car, and she says, “Is anything happening? My arm’s getting tired.” And he’s just going along like nothing is happening and then she gets frustrated and takes her rubber gloves off. And in a scene later on in the movie, the same sort of thing happens, and she says, “Is it supposed to be this soft?” Hysterical! 

Perhaps it’s not my icon-dar that is lacking. Perhaps this movie was so groundbreaking that so many movies wanted to pay homage to it that they all emulated it and improved on it so much that now it’s just an okay movie. 

Another theory as to why I thought it was just okay is that it reminded me of the so-called Greek Life on my campus. All through college I kept wondering if Greek people were at all happy about their nationality getting mixed up in these organizations. Organizations whose members, yes, did community service and stuff, but also contributed to the debaucherous drinking culture on campus. Every pledge cycle, the frat people would be marching around campus at 3 in the morning chanting and singing at the top of their lungs to make sure everyone heard them. Anyway, to avoid this post becoming an anti-fraternity diatribe, I’ll just say this movie hit too close to the reality that was my experience of “Greek” life at my school, and it kind of took some of the comedy out of it. It’s probably a combination of those two things that contributed to the meh-ness of the movie for me.

One of the positive things about the movie for me was the nostalgia. It was interesting to see a mimeograph machine in action! I’m going to date myself big time here, but it the beginning stages of my career in elementary school, all of our worksheets and papers were printed by a mimeograph machine which spat out weird looking purple copies of everything. Yep. I’m old. Mimeograph machines FTW!

Final Thoughts: The movie was a jello mold of meh with floaters of brilliance throughout. It may have been great at one time, but I think its time has come. Also, RIP John Belushi. We hardly even knew ye. 3 out of 6 slices of pizza.