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One of my all time favorites.

Just perfect...

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

A lot of people don't seem to realize that National Lampoon had literally dozens of films under their name. Looking back, it does in fact seem like this was the best. This movie is a great example of how everything continually builds on itself. There's this one scene where guys are shown hitting golf balls into various things, including a pot of soup. Later, we see Bluto finding that same golf ball in a pot of soup. Then he eats it!I have heard many goofy stories about college fraternities. I admit that I have barely seen any college comedy movies. There just don't seem to be that many famous ones around. My favorite joke is probably at the end when a playboy bunny crashes into a boy's room causing him to say, "Thank you, God!". It helps that we can great music throughout the whole film. The fact that the characters are quite likeable helps. ***1/2

This is a very silly movie and it did make me laugh. But not a huge amount. John Belushi is a talented comedian and did a few things that were highly entertaining (perving through a window, smashing a guitar, sneaking around, imitating a zit). But overall, nothing in the movie is particularly sophisticated or brilliant. It's generally fun but little more.Stephen Fry once compared American to English comedy, referencing this movie. The American style involves loud characters who annoy people. The English approach involves people trying to be clever and successful but failing miserably, often being oblivious to various problems around them. I tend to prefer the latter kind of comedy. In general, I prefer it when I like the characters. In Animal House, many of them are likeable BUT they do a lot of stupid and rude things which makes it less enjoyable. That they annoy arrogant, unpleasant characters makes it more bearable.This may be one of the better movies in its genre - the teen sex comedy. But it's not that great a genre so it's really not saying a lot. There isn't much heart to the movie. The characters are empty and don't change. And the scenes don't really progress meaningfully with few if any consequences as the movie goes along. For me, it's dated and mildly entertaining with a few highlights.

No film presents so daunting a challenge to review nearly 40 years after its release as "Animal House." That's because no matter how well one feels it holds up after all this time, there's no divorcing the National Lampoon debut from its place of distinction in history as the movie that gave birth to the modern comedy.The passing of these many decades can make it easy to forget that "Animal House" was not a contemporary comedy when it was released — it takes place in 1962 but was release in 1978. So the objective of first-time writers Harold Ramis, Douglas Kenney and Chris Miller was to capture the nostalgia of a more idealistic era, specifically the period in time when they were in college. That's why the film's soundtrack plays a big role in its iconic status. It's also what contributes to its timelessness — the humor doesn't get lost in topical jokes and references."Animal House," the original college comedy, paints a portrait of Greek life from the perspective of two freshmen at Faber College, Larry Kroger (Tom Hulce) and Kent Dorfman (Stephen Furst), who at the beginning of the film rush the prestigious yet white, WASP-y and wealthy Omega house with their fancy formalities. Spurned, they turn to the dilapidated Delta house, where Kent is a legacy (his dad was a Delta). Despite being peed on and windows breaking every five seconds, they feel right at home, eventually becoming "Pinto" and "Flounder." From there, the movie is mostly a collection of hijinks and sexual screwball comedy built around a basic story: Faber's Dean Vernon Wormer (John Vernon) is embarrassed of the Deltas and conspires with the Omegas to get them kicked off campus.From the film's opening credits sequence showing parts of the campus to marching band music, director John Landis quickly establishes the oxymoron of universities that take pride in all this academia, tradition and pomp and circumstance but in actuality foster a wild and crazy party lifestyle. It's not an indictment of higher education, but a reality check that the Delta lifestyle is what people actually remember about their college experiences and where college adds real meaning to one's life.Because "Animal House" is all about humorous twists on the gamut of college experiences, it plays a lot like a sketch comedy show strung into a film. There's no logical order to the scenes outside of the ones that tie into the thin story of Delta being on "double-secret probation." So it's easy to pick your favorite scenes or for certain moments to become memorable in spite of what happens in the rest of the movie. That's an important characteristic of "Animal House," one that its dozens of imitators over the years (and to this day) have mostly ignored. The movie was never bogged down by a plot or any kind of narrative arc. In fact, it has one of the most non-traditional endings of any comedy ever made. Yet generations of people have laughed with this film and taken a liking to its characters anyway.Anyone who has been in a fraternity relates to being freshmen like Pinto and Flouder or remembers well-mannered troublemakers like Boon (Peter Riegert) and Otter (Tim Matheson) — and the not-so-well-mannered troublemakers like the infamous Bluto (John Belushi), whom too many real-life college students have aspired to emulate. Even if you were an "independent" in college, you surely had a close-knit group of friends with similar dynamics who tried to pull off the same kind of shenanigans.The slapstick comedy including the golf balls, everything related to Niedermeyer's (Mark Metcalf) horse and the cafeteria food fight don't hold up as well over time, but earn a few smirks when you remember the extent of their influence. A lot of what was college situational humor back then is more typically associated with cliché high school humor now, such as stealing test answers, homecoming parades and food fights. There is, however, a subtle absurdity in the execution of these jokes, such as the length of time Landis spends filming Belushi piling plates onto his lunch tray (while snacking). There's a timeless genius to that even if it's not laugh-out-loud funny.The sexual humor, on the other hand, is a bit distasteful now, even though at the time its R-rated proclivities opened huge doors for raunch in movies. Unfortunately, this comes at the expense of the female characters. The scene with Bluto spying on the sorority girls having a topless pillow fight and Mandy Pepperidge (Mary Louise Weller) as she undresses is an obvious example of male gaze and promoting the straight male fantasy, but more problematic are how all the female characters in the film exist solely to gratify the male characters, or they turn out to be liars and cheaters. Pinto's angel-devil conscience moment might seem like the basis for an argument in defense of the film's portrayal of how men treat women, but that male behavior toward women continues to be problematic, especially on college campuses, these depictions are still troublesome. There's a truth to the notion that college guys are preoccupied with getting laid and it's understandable that Landis and the writers would want to play that up for comedic effect, but it's unfortunate the message they send in doing so.Nonetheless, from the toga party and "Shout" dance number to Bluto chugging a bottle of Jack Daniels, "Animal House" is a giant among comedies. Every modern comedy, even if it has nothing to do with college life, owes it a debt of gratitude. It's hard to see why it was such a trendsetter from 40 years into the future, but it's because how often its fingerprints have shown up in movies and television since that it becomes especially difficult to appreciate how novel it was in 1978. Even in its shortcomings, it has the aura of an unmistakable classic.

I have no critiques about the story-telling techniques. The acting is realistic, angles are comfortable and fluent, music is light and uplifting, but some values preached by this film is serious unacceptable to the society.First of all, let's look at all the characters that prevail in this movie: the infamous fraternity Delta, in which of course there are no African Americans, Asians, homosexual members or others. So clearly diversity is not a theme of the film.What kind of people thrive in Delta? Low-graders, drunkards, trouble-makers, people who indulge themselves in excessive sex life and endless partying and a brotherhood that is based on breaking the law and causing extreme discomfort to everyone around them. And of course the handsome-looking chef of a prominent fraternity makes a farce out of himself by believing a vicious girl's lie and is convinced that his girlfriend is stolen from one of the Delta members, and his girlfriend miraculously fall for the retard Delta member. And the good-looking uniformed officer gets himself knocked down from a horse, and his horse dies of a heart attack.In this film, doing things without thinking about consequences is bravery, alcohol overdose and obscene sex fantasy are the beauty of youth, trespassing the rules of society equals to thinking outside the box and breaking the status quo, and the high-achievers are the ones to be defeated, the losers are the ones with glare of heroes. I respect freedom of speech, I really do, but I still think the director needs to kneel to the ground and apologize to whoever come to believe any core values expressed by this film after watching it. However, I am forced to comment on the comedy elements of this film. Many classic lines from this film will always resonate in my brain during my college life. If the crew didn't try to use film as a tool to justify their twisted values, this film might have a really high rating.