Movie Review: Animal House (1978)

Animal House may not be the funniest movie ever made, but there was probably a point in my life when I thought it was. This was the first real raunchy comedy I saw as a kid, thus it left an impact.

The irony is some of the biggest laughs don’t even come from the raunchy parts. This movie has a couple of gags that are just incredible, like when the projector pulls up a picture of Flounder when the Delta house is voting on new pledges and we cut to Bluto screaming. Or when they’re all planning the parade crash and everyone looks at their perfectly synched watches, and Bluto looks at his and it’s just way off.

There’s just a lot to laugh at in this movie, though some of the jokes have aged badly. There’s a really long kind of racist scene that just really isn’t that funny. That’s where the movie really drags, when they leave the campus. But otherwise it’s very consistently funny.

And I love Dean Wormer as a villain.

John Vernon is so committed to being an absolute asshole, and he’s such a perfect foil to the casual disinterest of the members of Delta house.

Rating: 9/10