Animal House, 25 Years On...

Here's an article in the NY Times, addressing the influence and enduring popularity of National Lampoon's Animal House.



Perhaps the best--certainly the most thoughtful--take on Animal House can be found in Tony Hendra's book, Going Too Far. Here's a snippet for you:



"To hear the press tell it, it was all about a gang of eternally childish slobs cavorting in a playpen of permissiveness...But in screen time, these scenes were perhaps five minutes of a ninety-minute movie chock-ablock with event, conflict, surgically observed characters, and some of the best satirical writing since Dr. Strangelove.



You would never have guessed it, though, from the reputation makers. The secret of Animal House's phenomenal success, according to them, was its grossness, its tastelessness, its willingness to go all the way, especially when it came to the Big One, sex. All the rest was edited out of the conventional wisdom. Animal House became a gross movie, built around the embodiment of grossness, Belushi (who was rarely gross and certainly not the center of the movie), and furthermore a youth movie, because (a) youth likes grossness, not being old enough to know any better, and (b) because since it had a lot of young people in it, it must be for young people."



Now, me: So, twenty five years later, you get Old School--a funny movie, but flimsy, where the only carefully observed parts are the gross-out gags. Because it's not the story or the characters or the observation or the PRECISION, it's the puking. Not that I, like Landis is the Times article, "have anything against projectile-vomiting." It's just not enough for a movie.



Do I need to tell you to buy Going Too Far?