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. 

Pretty in Pink (1986)

Hungarian title:
“Pink Dream”

Directed by: Howard Deutch

Written by: John Hughes

Starring: Molly Ringwald, Harry Dean Stanton, John Cryer

Running Time: 1 hour, 36 minutes

Rating: PG-13

Pre-Conceived Notions: My first thought watching the trailer is that it’s going to be hard to separate John Cryer from his 2 1/2 Men character. I’m going to be expecting Charlie Sheen or Holland Taylor to pop out of the woodwork all throughout the movie. And then it just boils down to a typical ’80s John Hughes movie dealing with the same themes: teenage angst, status, sex, Molly Ringwald, etc. Two things I’m looking forward to seeing: a freaky-looking Annie Potts in a weird wig, and John Cryer having too much of a good time lip synching in a video store.

Why I Haven't Seen This Film: I’m not a John Hughes freak. Don’t his fans have names? If they do I can’t think of what they’re called. Hit me up in the comments if you know.

1 hour, 36 minutes later…: Aah, prom. So many memories. Especially my senior one. For me, it was basically a normal high school dance, except instead of getting funky and doing the worm and the Bartman in jeans and a t-shirt, people were doing all that stuff in formalwear. Maybe I was above it all in high school, or maybe I didn’t give a monkey’s about it, but I didn’t feel like it was a huge deal to go to prom alone. It could be because I actually brought three dates to prom because, y’know, I’m me, but seeing those people who went stag, it didn’t seem to faze them. In this movie? They act like prom could make or break somebody’s life! Maybe it could back then. Or, maybe I forget what it’s like being in high school, where everything is such a compressed, simplified microcosm of society, where people have to worry about popularity and wanting to fit in, and hormones and mystery meat and stuff like that, so everything is magnified one thousand percent.

Let’s get down to brass tacks. This movie was pretty good. It wasn’t really over the top like Sixteen Candles got in certain places, and there was a whole lot more action than in The Breakfast Club. It was sort of a mixture of the two. You have your themes of status and angst like in the Breakfast Club, and you’ve got the romantic end of things like in Sixteen Candles. Which reminds me: Is it just me, or did you get confused between James Spader and Andrew McCarthy? They look so much alike, it took me a while to notice that they were two different people. Maybe it’s the jet lag. Or the four doughnuts I had today. I’m going to blame it on the jet lag. Okay? Okay.

The thing I liked the most about this film is that it wasn’t entirely angsty. The film really addressed the whole topic of parents and how one goes about getting the support they need. She had the best father in the world, and her boss was as good as any mother figure she could have had. And Duckie was like a brother in a twisted sort of way. Y’know, I like Annie Potts in insane, out-there roles. It’s kind of a shame that she steered away from that when she got on Designing Women. ADHD anyone?

Final Thoughts: 5 slices of pizza out of 6. John Cryer stole the movie with a character you could root for, but always knew things weren’t going to work out for him; there was excellent chemistry between McCarthy and Ringwald, and a nice balance with the parental characters. And Molly Ringwald has above average clavicles. There. I said it.