So, in seven years (and counting) of university, I’ve not had HALF the fun these nerds seemed to, never mind the fact you never see them attend a single class throughout the film
But it’s on cable right now, and they’re showing the part with the Greek Council Games. The Nerds make a lot of money at the charity fundraiser by selling Voyeur photos of Betty Childs topped with whipped cream as pies. Which has GOT to be grossly illegal.
And as if that weren’t bad enough, Lewis (the lead nerd protagonist) follows this same girl into a bouncy castle, disguised as her boyfriend, and proceeds to have sex with her. And at the end of all of this, SHE’S COOL WITH IT. Yeah, let that sink in.
It’s not really a question or anything, but I’ve seen this movie like, a dozen times, and it wasn’t until today that I realized how disturbing that whole 10 minute stretch of film is, in spite of all the rotten things that the jocks did to them.
No classes? What about the scene where Anthony Edwards Shows his leet computer skills by mashing a few keys together and getting an avatar of him to dance around on the screen?
I thought about that, but was that a class or some sort of a workshop or lab? There was no instructor, and he was just sorta…dicking around, trying to impress a chick. Even so, I still think my point stands.
To be fair, that’s just a lab, where Gilbert seems to be walking around looking to help people.
He helps Judy, who for some reason has been transformed from a relatively attractive geek in Weird Genius, with Val Kilmer (she was the hyperactive Jordan), to an almost unrecognizable geek, and member of the Omega Mu’s.
This movie is one that for some reason escaped the criticism that it has gathered in the last 10 years. And I don’t understand it. Why did the rape scene, for instance, not receive more negative attention at the time? Like you, when I actually realized that a rape had taken place, it disturbed me. But since Betty Childs enjoyed it, all is well! Very strange.
You also bring up the nude pictures. I guess funny outweighs legal, or things like this can happen in college, or something. But yeah, I’d think the Tri-Lamb fraternity would be heading to jail for their illegal photos of the Pi’s.
The Greek Games opening game is the 20 lap, 20 beer chug-a-lug that would never be cleared by a university. Alcohol poisoning your students seems a strange way to have fun.
Upon probing this on my Facebook, someone else brought up a point which may be borderline: after being accepted into an all-black fraternity, the tri-lamb kids find the word “Nerds!” burning on their front lawn, in a faintly Klan-esque gesture. I would have never made the connection, but yikes! What a school to go to…
She was actually shocked at first, then only cool with it after it sank in that it had been the best sex of her life.
“It’s YOU!!! You…you…you…were wonderful!”
And her up-to-then jock boyfriend had just compared her to a GOAT, when she had suggested they slip off for nookie. So screw him.
See every John Hughes movie ever made for examples of this.
How so? In my estimate, Real Genius comes off as one of the best teen/geek movies of the 'Eighties; it treats the nerds with respect, the campus and dorm actually look as if they’re a functioning university campus, the “let’s watch the characters do science” montage actually looks like they’re in real labs and classrooms (the repeated scene of the calculus class in which more and more students put in tape recorders cumulating in the lecturer having a taped lecture with “Listen carefully…math on tape is hard,” on the board cracked me up), and (within the bounds of comedic necessity) they even use the correct terminology in regard to chemical excimer lasers. I guess you can argue that the characters act unethically in the sense that once they discover that they have been deceived about the purpose of the laser project (which is curiously staffed by only undergraduate students, and only Knight and Taylor seem to have an actual clue about the program) they sabotage it, causing it to destroy Professor Hathaway’s house via Pop Secret Demolition (another excursion from reality but justified dramatically when Kent comes flying out the front door on a tidal wave of popcorn), but really, William Atherton exists in movies only to be humiliated by being punched in the face or exposed for secret collaboration with the CIA, and besides, he refurbished the house using funds embezzled from the project. Ditto for the bugging and comeuppance of Kent.
And of course, the film is eminently quotable. “Compared to you, most people have the IQ of a carrot. We’re different, Mitch…better.”
I participated in “Greek Week” events like this. I did not do beer-chugging myself, but I was there, and the university was fully aware they were occurring. The schedule of Greek Week events was in the campus newspaper.
When I was going to school, in the late 90s, the University never would have allowed alcohol related games on campus (too great a potential for a lawsuit, I would imagine). But off campus, most of the time they just looked the other way.
What’s funny to me is that, unlike The Breakfast Club or something, I never hear people these days talk about how great Revenge of the Nerds was or how they watch it each time it’s on TV. The only time it gets brought up is to complain about the ending of a largely forgotten movie from a couple decades ago. Yeah, it was well reviewed at the time and spawned a bunch of sequels and stuff but so did Police Academy (Mahoney was spying on naked women!) and no one posts about that.
I watched it about a year or so ago when it was on Netflix streaming because I remembered liking it when it first came out (mind you, I was 11 and it was my first R rated movie) and I don’t know that I cracked a smile. If not for the occasional reference to the ending, I’d have forgotten about it by now.
