Slacker Comedies
Slacker comedies seem to have originated from the basic comedy genre with the release of National Lampoon's Animal House in 1978. Often focusing on college life and the academic activities of the students (or lack thereof) who attend there, these movies generally follow a character's pursuit of happiness through doing as little as humanly possible. These characters are constantly mocked by others, often participate in drug and/or alcohol use, and have a remarkable ability to find their way into hair-raising situations.
The main character usually has some outstanding goal he strives toward, which eventually forces him to change his slacker ways (if only for 5 minutes) to get the job done. Slacker comedies often mesh with other genres depending on what this goal is. It may be the pursuit of sex (American Pie), or perhaps simply graduating (National Lampoon's Van Wilder), or maybe the character just wants to survive the day long enough to duck the drug dealer he's pissed off (Half-Baked or Friday), but in the end, everything always seems to turn out right. The actions of the main character as well as the other characters' reactions to him are often the driving force of the movie's laughs, while many of these films even explore the means of slapstick comedy.
Review courtesy Variety (review link itself requires subscription)
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Posted: Sun., Jan. 1, 1978 Steady readers of the National Lampoon may find National Lampoon's Animal House a somewhat soft-pedalled, punches-pulled parody of college campus life circa 1962. However, there's enough bite and bawdiness to provide lots of smiles and several broad guffaws. Writers have concocted a pre-Vietnam college confrontation between a scruffy fraternity and high-elegant campus society. Interspersed in the new faces are the more familiar John Vernon, projecting well his meany charisma here as a corrupt dean; Verna Bloom, Vernon's swinging wife; Cesare Danova, the Mafioso-type mayor of the college town; Donald Sutherland as the super-hip young professor in the days when squares were still saying 'hep'. Of no small and subtle artistic help is the score by Elmer Bernstein which blithely wafts 'Gaudeamus Igitur' themes amidst the tumult of beer 'orgies', neo-Nazi ROTC drills, cafeteria food fights and a climactic disruption of a traditional Homecoming street parade. Among the younger players, John Belushi and Tim Matheson are very good as
leaders of the unruly fraternity, while James Daughton and Mark Metcalf are
prominent as the snotty fratmen, all of whom, quite deliberately, look like
Nixon White House aides. |
