National Lampoon's Animal House

Review by Jason Gaston

 

Before the National Lampoon movies became one unfunny disaster after another,  there were the classics.  National Lampoon's Vacation and National Lampoon's Animal House, a movie that defined college binge drinking and annoying frat boys for decades.

They don't make movies like this anymore and even if they wanted to, they couldn't because of this useless fad of political correctness we're going through.  It's a movie that you can watch hundreds and hundreds of times and still be rolling on the floor with laughter every time.  I mean, sure, modern comedies - the good ones, at least - are nice.  But I'll take Animal House over a hundred American Pies any day of the week.

The story is, of course, simple.  The Deltas are an out of control fraternity on some unmentioned campus in Anywhere, USA.  The house's biggest foe is Dean Wormer who will stop at nothing to close down the boozing embarrassments to his college once and for all.

Yeah, the pretentious will sneer at Animal House for its humor that aims at the lowest common denominator and its inconsistent storyline that's basically just a clothesline to hang jokes on.  Admittedly, they are right... the story is inconsistent even if the first hour of the movie is almost perfect.  What drives Animal House isn't the script... it's the actors and characters, most notably, of course, John Belushi's Bluto.

Bluto is the overgrown child.  The kind of guy who comes to campus and stays because he likes the beer.  While I was in college, I knew a dozen of these guys and I didn't like a single one of them.  None were like Bluto... Bluto is a likeable lump.  A man who is a looser, yet he's also a winner because you just can't help but love him and his antics.  In the hands of a lesser actor, Bluto would have been one of those dozen guys in college I didn't like, but he pulled the part off and stole the show with it.  It's just another reason to miss the guy.

The plot turns a little weak towards the tail end of the movie, but there's so many funny parts even in that weak area that it would take a review ten times as long as this one to list them all.

It's not a perfect movie by any means, but it's a damn good one that is watchable for as long as your tape or DVD holds out.  A campus classic.