I just watched Animal House and I didn't like it.

During the HBO and Cinemax free weekend, I recorded quite a few movies on my TiVo. One of them was Animal House, I’ve never seen the whole movie watching straight through, although I know it’s been on in the background and I’ve seen various scenes.

This really isn’t a good movie and I don’t think it is funny. Perhaps if I had seen it in the theatre in the 1970s, strung out on cocaine, I might have appreciated it more. I’m glad I got to see the origins of some of the famous lines from the movie.

Anyway, do you think it holds up today? I didn’t delete it, perhaps I’ll keep it on my TiVo and try watching it after a few drinks and see if perhaps it works better.

You know you’re getting old, when you side with Dean Wormer.

Fat, drunk and stupid really is no way to go through life.

But then, I’ve always hated frat boys. Even in college.

The movie has not aged well. Attitudes have changed towards just about everything in it. Knocking up an underage girl is not considered humorously foolish now days. Hazing is considered a criminal act rather than a bonding experience. And Greek life in general has lost a lot of its appeal. As I get old, Dean Wormer has become more and more sensible to me. However, “Senator and Mrs. Blutarsky” is still hilarious.

I saw it when it was first released, the summer before I went off to college.
The (mostly teenagers) in the audience were laughing so hard I missed a lot of the dialog.
I still love the movie, but mostly for it’s nostalgia. It was so groundbreaking at the time - now it just seems tame.
But, yeah - both the Delts and the Alphas were assholes, in their own way.

So is this IMHO. All the more so when I learned Stephen Bishop( the guitar player )had no idea what was about to happen.

I don’t like ‘Blazing Saddles’ either. Both that and ‘Animal House’ were considered groundbreaking, comedically. To me they’re just slapstick and cheap shots. But hey, to each his own.

I agree it’s not aged well. I must’ve seen it 30-40 times between its initial release and 1985, but as I think about it now, I can’t see the humor. But in those days, it was great. And it still has great lines, particularly from Wormer (“Who dumped a truckload of Fizzies in the swim meet?”/ “It’s time someone put their foot down, and that foot is me!”, etc.)
Another that hasn’t aged well is Revenge of the Nerds. Can you imagine the voyeurism scene today (the one with the cameras in the sorority house: “What’s Betty up to?”)

What hazing? The evil ultra-white frat does paddle pledges in their underwear, but is it really that bad that D-Day and Bluto scare Pinto and Flounder with fire extinguishers? Pretty much the only thing Deltas do, to their pledges, is provide free beer to kids who (probably in that time and place) can legally drink.

TBH, I avoided frats in college because I was sure I’d get the paddling hazing reinstated just in my case. But Animal House is just a raucous, fun, romp. The way Kroger smoothly takes advantage of every situation is loads of fun. How ever the top D-Day and Bluto is fun too. How the pledges, Delta and others, try to maintain while everyone more experienced than they are just blows them off is fun as well.

The blatant sexism hasn’t held up well, I agree. That’s in part an artifact of the gratuitous nudity rampant in pre-1980’s films. But Animal House is historical picture about academia in the 1960’s. The endless ogling is just a slice of these (immature) people’s lives.

Yeah, the paddling is what I refer to.

The first time I saw it was in college because “it’s the quintessential college movie man.” I think it was my freshman year, so that’d be 04-05. I didn’t see anything funny in the movie other than “Oh THAT’S where that’s from…”

I do recognize that it was a product of its time and that had a lot to do with it, but I never found it funny.

For that matter, I don’t see the appeal to any of the John Hughes movies either. Ferris Beuller’s biggest comedy is that fact that the movie treats itself as serious. The Breakfast Club is just godawful, boring and trite too for that matter.

Loved it then, still like it today. A product of its time, but so are we all. Plus, I remember the stories the movie was based on when they came out in National Lampoon.

I don’t know how that could be, at least once the scene started shooting. I could see him thinking he was just a bit of scene setting business at the start, but once John comes up and stands next to him, there’s really only three ways it could have gone…

  1. He smashes the guitar. 2) He smashes the guitarist. 3) He sits down and listens with the girls.

2 could certainly not be a surprise, because he’d have to be part of it.

3 is possible (and would have been funnier), but it’s at best a tossup with 1.

Yes, It was hilarious then, but it still has moments.* “He can’t do that to our pledges! Yeah, only* we *can do that to our pledges!”
*

“You fucked up, you trusted us.*” I still use that today.
DOUBLE SECRET PROBATION!

Oh, he knew the scene( he suggested the song they used ), but he didn’t know that Belushi would go ape and actually punch a hole in the wall. Apparently the guitar was supposed to be a breakaway, but didn’t break properly and Belushi just went nuts trying to destroy it. He claims to have been actually frightened in the moment :).

Aah, OK, that makes sense, then.

I didn’t think Animal House was funny at all.

The only John Belushi movie I thoroughly enjoyed is, “Neighbors” (1981). In, fact, on re-watch, I still think it’s one of the funniest movies ever made. Quite underrated IMHO. Unique in that Belushi played the timid, hapless fool and Aykroyd played the over-the-top maniac.

Think I might watch it again tonight. You should, too.

I saw it when it came out and thought it was pretty stupid. Much later, I rewatched it and found it unbearable.

I enjoy it to this day, on occasion. But I went to college in the early seventies and think I knew every one of those guys.

I was in my late 20’s when it came out. Here’s the thing. We KNEW the humor was racist, sexist, juvenile, and cruel. We even knew that a lot of the movie’s ideas had been recycled from the magazines stories andyearbook. And we laughed because we loved stupid humor.

Seriously, if we cut every objectionable scene, the remaining movie would be about four minutes long and stupid. But those four minutes would still be funny.

eta: Oh yeah. Karen Allen!

I think ones attitude towards frat house culture modifies your viewing of it.

At the time the movie came out frats were dying off. The writers really hated frats and wanted to put the final nail in the coffin.

So it’s a dumping on frats movie.

But it backfired big time. Bozos watched the movie and thought the whole drunken frat thing was something to emulate rather than scorn. So the frats came back. And the drunkeness and other abuses got worse. Frat membership has even been doing well the last decade plus.

If you’re watching it now from the perspective of a frat type, it’s great since it shows all the great fun you can have in a frat! (Talk about a major whoosh there.)

From the perspective of a frat hater, many still get whooshed and think how sad it is they are glorifying such behavior.