The decade of the 1980s put forth a host of memorable movies; some achieving cult status for their innovation and acting performance, most achieving the iconic plateau of worship for no other reason than there nostalgic value.
College humor has been a popular source for the big screen since “National Lampoon’s Animal House” in 1978, and has continued to the present day some 40 years later with hits and misses such as “American Pie,” “Old School,” and “Van Wilder.”
The early ’80s saw several entries into the genre, none with higher impact and cultist staying power than the 1984 piece “Revenge of the Nerds.” That a movie nerd and self proclaimed student of the ’80s hadn’t seen in in the three decades since its release felt sinful, so watching it now as an adult may have had a different impact on me than of its intended target audience – drunk college aged idiots.
“Revenge of the Nerds” shatters all forms of political correctness, tossing its characters into cartoonish stereotypes of the clique they most closely represent and are eternally unable to remove themselves from.
Taking place at the fictitious Adams College, we see the typical jocks that make up the Alpha Beta Fraternity, led by charismatic Stan Gable (Ted McGinley of ‘Married with Children’ fame), Danny (Matt Salinger) and Ogre (Donald Gibb) – a behemoth of an athlete who grunts like a savage, makes faces like a troll, and only lifts his knuckles off the ground to guzzle cheap beer like its water. The jocks are lead by the football coach (played perfectly by John Goodman).
The women of the Pi Delta Pi sorority are beautiful, helpless, and of course lust after the jocks. Julia Montgomery is the quintessential 80s lead actress – her beauty as sorority leader Betty Childs is only rivaled by her sexual desires and morale ineptitude.
Of course, the focal point of the movie belongs to the bespectacled computer whiz titular freshman; nerds in high school, now nerds in college. In an era before cell phones and the ridiculous amounts of technology we have today, computer science was the next big field and its interesting to watch the characters in the genesis of the computer age.
Best friends and typical geeks Lewis and Gilbert (Robert Carradine and Anthony Edwards) are starting freshman year at Adams College. Its not enough that each dresses to the character of nerd with pocket protectors, gaudy clothes, unaesthetic glasses, but Lewis employs an over the top laugh that’s so obnoxious you’d find it difficult not to sympathies with his high school tormentors.
Each enters college with the big hopes and dreams that the bullies of their high school days are a thing of the past, only to find the rude awakening that the constant nerds vs jocks struggle goes on forever and ever.
“Revenge of the Nerds” is over the top with its story and characters, but somehow manages to make it all work. You’ll wonder why someone like Stan, so handsome and perfect in appearance its a joke, is friends with someone like Ogre, who we are first introduced to as he is dangling a nerd off a balcony by his feet and chanting nerd! nerd! over and over again like a caveman. But it works.
Lewis and Gilbert are joined by iconic fellow nerds Poindexter, Lamar Latrelle, and Booger (Curtis Armstrong), as they work together to attain Fraternity status at the college, opposed only by the jocks who see them as a threat to their power.
While “Nerds” has its shortcomings of the era, in particular scenes that run a touch too long and tend to get dull, the flow sticks with its plot and the makings of something bigger than a movie that has transcended time is there.
The jokes are crass and the characters vulgar. Nerds and jocks are overly characterized to create a divide that isn’t really there but has become commonplace in fiction.
Though its highly dated, “Revenge of the Nerds” offers laughs and a great perspective into the nostalgia of 1980 cinema.
by – Matt Christopher
