National Lampoon's Animal House

Yep, it must be Animal House!

The classic frat comedy of all time. A simple story of college life for a bunch of delinquents who seek solace with a an endless supply of beer, toga parties and loads of young girls.

It doesn't matter that the Delta House (the home of said delinquents), continually fail to pass their exams, for them sex & booze is all what life is about.

The movie is a perfect vehicle for Saturday Night Live star, John Belushi, who is allowed to show off his considerable talent as the biggest sicko of the Delta bunch - check out his impression of a Zit!!

But he is well supported by Tom Hulce, and surprisingly Donald Sutherland as the hippy professor with wayout theories.

Able actor, John Vernon, plays the Principle of the college and often the butt of the Delta House: finding a horse in his office is a classic piece of farce!

All in all, the film hangs together very well with a good script and superb visual jokes. John Landis must have a wild college life himself when he made this.

***/*****

"Animal House" is a comedy classic and there have already been a bunch of reviews for it. So, instead of discussing the specifics, I want to relate what happened when I re-watch the film a few years ago. Now I have always loved "Animal House" and the film never fails to make me laugh. Even now, if my wife says 'Fawn Liebowitz', I can't help but laugh. So, when my oldest daughter got old enough to watch the film (which is 30, but I watched it with her when she turned 18), we watched it together. I KNEW she'd laugh hysterically....and she never did. In fact, when the film was over, she said 'it's okay...' and I was shocked. How could she not love the film?! Well, I think a lot of it happens to have a lot to do with when you grew up. Back in the late 70s, it worked GREAT but now here in 2008, it fell a bit flat. Wow...what a shock.

So, I assume that the film will definitely work better if you grew up around the time the film was made...though it is possible that my oldest is just a weird!

There was American Graffiti a few years earlier but Animal House set a standard of frat pack comedies with tits and ass that we still see today with the American Pie films.

The film is set in the early 1960s as the college Dean Vernon Wormer wants to remove the Deltas from the campus due to repeated conduct violations and low academic achievement. Of course the Deltas will include almost anyone in their house and is a haven for misfits in contrast to the Omegas who are clean cut, smug, privileged as well as exclusive who will have nothing to do with people who are fat, ugly, poor or coloured.

The screenplay and comedy was fresh for the time and the characters played by Tim Matheson, Peter Riegert, Tom Hulce have been imitated by others since then. In fact Tom Hanks very much copied Matheson's character in the 1980s.

Used sparingly John Belushi gives the loudest and wildest performance as Bluto and it all ends up in chaos in a parade where the Deltas have a rogue float that causes havoc.

Animal House has a messy, manic energy which its cast runs with as they know at least which direction they are heading. They blazed a trail for what followed but this film got there first.

You'll have to excuse me and some of the other proponents of 'National Lampoon's Animal House' if we seem a little defensive about the movie. That's because it's often not recognized as the superior comedy classic that it is. Instead, too often it is lumped in with the multitude of inferior films that it inspired, which is totally unfair.

Some of the conventional wisdom about 'Animal House' is absolutely right, though. John Belushi does give a bravura performance that is reminiscent of the great comics before him like Chaplin, Keaton (Buster, not Michael), the Marx Brothers, etc., and he does it with a wonderful economy of words. His character of "Bluto" Blutarsky is often emulated and imitated but many times the persons doing so have no idea what it was that made him and his performance so great.

Tim Matheson as "Otter" and his other frat house buddies were also prototypes that were much imitated too, and again often without success. Otter was the quintessential smooth talker, always working an angle on everybody, especially the ladies. When a woman tells him that his lovemaking wasn't that great, he cocks his head, points a finger at himself and mouths the words, "not great?" in mock disbelief. Before Tom Hanks got "Big" he made a career out of playing this character. Also John Vernon set a standard for straight men with his portrayal of the beleaguered Dean Wormer, plagued by his "zoo fraternity."

Not all of the movie's humor aims low, by any means; some of it is quite sophisticated. (Yes, you read it right.) The screenwriters and director John Landis did a great job evoking Kennedy-era America and they found a lot to laugh at. This comedy is an unqualified classic by the simplest definition-- it makes you laugh, long and loud.

If you have only seen this movie on TV, you have not really seen this movie. One of the best movie experiences of my life was seeing this movie in the theater with a full house of college students. I have never heard an audience laugh so hard, and I was laughing with them. That experience can never be recaptured. I don't know why this movie doesn't make the midnight movie tour in college towns. That way it might have some of the same impact. Also when it came out in 1978 it is hard to explain how big John Belushi was unless you were there and saw it first hand. It's still funny on the small screen, but only if you see it uncut. Never watch it on a network, they cut out most of the jokes!