Challenge Week 35: Animal House

There have been several movies in this challenge that I didn’t expect to like and surprised me quite a bit. This was not one of them. After I loved The Blues Brothers so much, I thought maybe my pre-conceptions of Animal House might be way off, and the team of Landis and Belushi might hit again, but I’m sorry, this kind of juvenile frat humor is not remotely my thing.

The Dean is intent on getting the troublesome Delta Tau Chi fraternity expelled wholesale, but they retaliate with even more bad behavior and pranks against upstanding frat man Neidermeyer and eventually the whole homecoming parade.

Belushi here is the stereotypical slacker on the 8-year college plan, sneaking peeks into the sorority houses, planning toga parties (that yes, do sort of turn into orgies), setting pranks in action and generally wreaking havoc. The other characters have a bit more going on, perhaps, but not much.

The one bright spot is Karen Allen (three years pre-Marion Ravenwood), and she is delightful in her few scenes, even if she does end up in an also stereotypical relationship with one of her professors. Maybe Animal House set these stereotypes, but I don’t really care about originality in setting trends I don’t like.

Sorry, but this is probably the first real total miss of the challenge. Glad I saw it so I can at least know I was right about not caring for it, but that’s about as far as it goes.

Stats and stuff…

1978, USA
directed by John Landis, written by Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney, Chris Miller
starring Tom Hulce, Stephen Furst, John Belushi, Mark Metcalf, Karen Allen, Kevin Bacon

I’m ranking all my Challenge films on Flickchart (as I do all the films I see), a movie-ranking website that asks you to choose your favorite between two movies until it builds a ranked list of your favorites. Just for fun, I will average out the rankings and keep a running tally of whose recommendations rank the highest. When you add a film to Flickchart, it pits it against films already on your chart to see where it should fall. Here’s how Animal House entered my chart:

Animal House < True Lies
Animal House < Center Stage
Animal House > Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears
Animal House < How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
Animal House < Emmett Otter’s Jug-Band Christmas
Animal House > Henry & June
Animal House < Titan A.E.
Animal House < The Beat That My Heart Skipped
Animal House > Star Trek Into Darkness
Animal House < Dead Calm
Animal House < House on Haunted Hill
Animal House < Two Tickets to Broadway