BP’s Top 100 List Movie Challenge #99: Animal House, by Sarah Brinks

You too can join the 2017 BP’s Top 100 List Movie Challenge. It’s easy. Just watch each of the 100 films on the BP top 100 list from 100 to 1. It will end up roughly equaling two movies a week from the list each week of the year. It’d be great to hear your thoughts in the comments each week.

Just to start, I want to say how happy I am that the Battleship Pretension Top 100 includes comedies. I also have to admit that I had never seen Animal House before I started this movie challenge. I had seen a few scenes here and there but I had never seen it in its entirety. Now that I have, I can see how this is the grandfather of all the “college/house party” movies I have seen. While the film is a lot of silly fun, there are some difficult parts watching it with a modern eye. The way women and the respect of women’s bodies is addressed as well as the blatant racism and homophobia are a real problem. I’m not going to make any excuses for the film but it was made nearly forty years ago and set over 50 years ago, when sensitivities were different. Despite the cringe-worthy parts it is a funny film. I know that I am not the target audience for Animal House as I am not a teenage boy, but it was fun see all the ways other comedies I grew up watching either paid homage or ripped off this film. There are some classic performances like Jim Belushi’s Blutarsky and Tim Matheson’s Eric Stratton. Overall I think Animal House does belong on the Battleship Pretension Top 100 movies list. Battleship Pretension is a community that values comedy and Animal House defined a whole genre of comedies. I have decided to rate each of the films on the list using an arbitrary scale based on the board game Battleship (lowest: Destroyer, Submarine, Cruiser, Battleship, highest: Carrier)

Animal House Battleship Rank: Cruiser