# Is "Animal House" overrated? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 9, 2010, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858 "2010-03-09T15:29:47Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Freudian\_Slit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/5daacb/32.png) [@Freudian\_Slit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freudian_Slit)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2010, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858/21 "2010-03-09T18:25:05Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > I saw it as an adult and yes, I agree it is overexposed, outdated, and definitely overrated. But I never thought it was supposed to be something great, and people act like it is. I think it was just supposed to be a stupid funny movie and people are looking back at it through the filter of their own nostalgia. > > No problem there, just that we don’t all have that filter for the same things. Agreed. I never thought it was great or meant to be great either. It’s not really my thing, but others love it, and I assume there are things I love that other people find stupid. ---
**Author:** ![Sigmagirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c89c15/32.png) [@Sigmagirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmagirl)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2010, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858/22 "2010-03-09T18:26:50Z")
I saw it for the first time about two weeks before I went through rush. It really put things in perspective for me and gave me a sense of humor about the process, which I don’t think a lot of people had or have. ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2010, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858/23 "2010-03-09T18:27:30Z")
I was in my first year of college when it came out. I thought it was the funniest movie I’d ever seen. 20+ years later I buy a copy. I watch it every couple months and still appreciate it. And I quote it all the time, trust me, I’m in pre-law. ---
**Author:** ![Spud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spud/32/347_2.png) [@Spud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spud)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2010, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858/24 "2010-03-09T18:32:53Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > You can’t hold a whole message board responsible for the opinions of a few, sick twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn’t we blame the whole social media system? And if the whole social media system is guilty, then isn’t this an indictment of the Internet? I put it to you, \*\*Rocket Science \*\*- isn’t this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we’re not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. I thought you were pre med… ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2010, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858/25 "2010-03-09T18:37:46Z")
It’s much funnier on DVD when you don’t have tons of edits for TV. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2010, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858/26 "2010-03-09T18:40:33Z")
I will only say that generally speaking, comedy doesn’t age well. Do I still find it funny? Yes. Would I expect someone under 25 or so to find it funny today? Maybe not. ---
**Author:** ![tacoloco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/7993a0/32.png) [@tacoloco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tacoloco)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2010, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858/27 "2010-03-09T18:46:23Z")
Animal House is a classic. I don’t find as many things in it uproariously funny as I did when I was younger, but there a still parts that make me howl with laughter. Definitely NOT overrated. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2010, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858/28 "2010-03-09T18:54:23Z")
> [@Anaamika](#): > > I saw it as an adult and yes, I agree it is overexposed, outdated, and definitely overrated. But I never thought it was supposed to be something great, and people act like it is. I think it was just supposed to be a stupid funny movie and people are looking back at it through the filter of their own nostalgia. > > No problem there, just that we don’t all have that filter for the same things. The 1978 film itself, of course, was somewhat nostalgic, for American campus life in the early '60s (when most of the original _National Lampoon_ crew went to school), when the party-animal Deltas and the elitist-asshole Omegas were pretty much the whole lineup, and there was no SDS or counterculture or campus riots, nobody had even heard of Vietnam, nobody was much interested in politics, and just smoking **marijuana** at a prof’s house was daring and transgressive and mind-expanding. An interesting literary portrait of the same melieu can be found in [_Hearts in Atlantis,_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearts_In_Atlantis) by Stephen King (another Baby Boomer). ---
**Author:** ![tr0psn4j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/958977/32.png) [@tr0psn4j](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tr0psn4j)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2010, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858/29 "2010-03-09T18:55:00Z")
Can you name a better comedy in that particular sub-genre? It’s The Best. I can’t even begin to describe it’s awesomness! Now if I go back to CF and see a similar thread about the Blues Brothers being overrated today, I’m going to be pissed. ---
**Author:** ![StusBlues](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/dc4da7/32.png) [@StusBlues](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/StusBlues)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2010, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858/30 "2010-03-09T18:57:09Z")
> [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > I was at the same school for both bachelor’s and masters, total of 6 and a half years. I use “seven years of college down the drain” all the time. My first thought, actually, was that so many college students are taking longer to graduate that this line is no longer intrinsically funny. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2010, 7:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858/31 "2010-03-09T19:00:28Z")
Hey **tr0psn4j** - you fucked up. You trusted us! ---
**Author:** ![tr0psn4j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/958977/32.png) [@tr0psn4j](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tr0psn4j)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2010, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858/32 "2010-03-09T19:05:36Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Hey **tr0psn4j** - you fucked up. You trusted us! Hey actually I did. Should be CS, not CF. How do I misspell an acronym? :smack: Guess I can’t spend my whole life worrying about it though. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2010, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858/33 "2010-03-09T19:19:34Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > You can’t hold a whole message board responsible for the opinions of a few, sick twisted individuals. For if you do, then shouldn’t we blame the whole social media system? And if the whole social media system is guilty, then isn’t this an indictment of the Internet? I put it to you, \*\*Rocket Science \*\*- isn’t this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we’re not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America. **kunilou** ’s right. Psychotic, but absolutely right. We gotta take these bastards. Now we could do it with conventional weapons that could take years and cost millions of lives. No, I think we have to go all out. I think that this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part. We’re just the internet message board posters to do it. ---
**Author:** ![Spud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spud/32/347_2.png) [@Spud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spud)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2010, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858/34 "2010-03-09T19:20:17Z")
I think that the simple fact that several posters are quoting or paraphrasing lines from a 32 year old movie indicates that it had some impact. ---
**Author:** ![phungi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/phungi/32/395_2.png) [@phungi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/phungi)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2010, 7:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858/35 "2010-03-09T19:49:22Z")
> [@Spud](#): > > I think that the simple fact that several posters are quoting or paraphrasing lines from a 32 year old movie indicates that it had some impact. Spud, I am appointing you thread representative to the social committee ---
**Author:** ![Spud](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spud/32/347_2.png) [@Spud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spud)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2010, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858/36 "2010-03-09T19:57:46Z")
> [@phungi](#): > > Spud, I am appointing you thread representative to the social committee And here I thought I was being sent over to sit with Mohamud, Sandeep, Sidney, and Clayton. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2010, 8:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858/37 "2010-03-09T20:01:10Z")
Only if you are a wimp or a blimp. ---
**Author:** ![In\_Winnipeg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a8b319/32.png) [@In\_Winnipeg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/In_Winnipeg)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2010, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858/38 "2010-03-09T20:29:38Z")
At the time it came out, it was hilarious. I guess you just had to be there. Comedy, however, is very much a product of its times. Lenny Bruce doesn’t sound as groundbreaking and taboo as he was at the time he was orginally recorded; George Carlin isn’t nearly as funny as when his albums were released, and don’t even get me started on Cheech and Chong. Don’t get me wrong; I still find them all to be funny, but I wouldn’t necessarily expect someone who was 20-something to see them the same way, just in the way I didn’t find what my father found funny to be as funny as he felt it was, such as Abbot and Costello, the Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy. Rest assured, Amimal House was outrageously funny when it was first released. It was, however, the first of it’s genre, and the first is usually eclipsed over time. ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2010, 8:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858/39 "2010-03-09T20:37:12Z")
> [@Spud](#): > > And here I thought I was being sent over to sit with Mohamud, Sandeep, Sidney, and Clayton. Not Sandeep, the guy’s name was **Jugdish** …I remember thinking, “What the heck kind of name is _Jugdish_?” ---
**Author:** ![Spoons](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spoons/32/3141_2.png) [@Spoons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoons)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2010, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858/40 "2010-03-09T20:42:18Z")
> [@Spud](#): > > And here I thought I was being sent over to sit with Mohamud, Sandeep, Sidney, and Clayton. Mention modern art, civil rights, or folk music, and you’re in like Flynn. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-animal-house-overrated/531858.md?page=3)