Animal House or Caddyshack?

Is there another choice?.....I'd suffer multiple viewings of F.A.R.T. The Movie before those atrocities

 

I am a graduate of Yellowstream University.

 

King Frat did have the finest fart contest that I've ever seen. Complete with a fartometer.

 

Animal House, of course.
Silly question; I'm honestly surprised the votes are so close. There's absolutely no contest.

 

For those truly obsessed, ANIMAL HOUSE is a sequel of sorts to the NATIONAL LAMPOON 1964 HIGH SCHOOL YEARBOOK, a faux document that may be the funniest book you'll ever read.

The fake yearbook belongs to one Larry Kroger, and the yearbook itself reveals his prototypical but hilarious school experience as a little noticed normal guy who crushes on Unobtanium girls and endures daily humiliations -- just like you remember high school!

The silly clubs, the overly dedicated teachers, the disengaged teachers, the privileged jocks, the rich kid, the artsy kids, the persecuted outsiders, the scary outsiders . . . They're all here. Especially Larry's best friend, the class clown.

The book is also personalized with faux handwriting by the characters signing Larry's yearbook, adding layers to his story and his relationships to everyone in school. It really is quite genius and worth the eBay investment.

I would try to get the most recent hardcover edition, if only because earlier paperback editions are likely to have cracked bindings and loose pages . . .

 

After chatting with some coworkers about this topic it seemed like preferences seemed to break along age lines, with the 50s and older preferring Animal House and the 40s and younger preferring Caddyshack.

 

National Lampoon's Vacation

 

At least he lives on in Animal House----love it when he shoves the bandleader aside and marches the band down a dead-end alley!

 

That's interesting, given that the two films were released just two years apart, & were designed & marketed to appeal to the same demographic.

 

This is like the Sophie's Choice of polls. I just can't make the choice.

 

Well, what the hell we supposed to do, ya moe-ron?

 

Maybe the 1960s setting for Animal House plays a role?

 

I recently watched Animal House and it was still quite funny.

The last time I watched Caddyshack I hardly laughed at all.

First off, the soundtrack of Animal House wonderfully evokes the 1962 setting, giving it an appealing romance/nostalgia that "present day" Caddyshack lacks.

I think the performing and writing in Animal House is of a higher quality (note: I was a big fan of the National Lampoon (Kinney, Miller, et al.).

Examples:
- Belushi's saunter along the cafeteria line has a beautiful comic subtlety that is found nowhere in Caddyshack.
- Karen Allen's girlfriend-of-Boone's character expressing that it's not that she doesn't want him to go out with the guys but that she wants him to not to want to go out with the guys is a perfectly observed sentiment of millions of girlfriends all over the world -- and isn't a joke.
- Verna Bloom's wife of Dean Wormer has a great minor role with a very economical -- and surprisingly developed -- plot arc (briefly seen newspaper headline: "Mrs. Wormer to Vacation in Sarasota Springs").

Also, the way the writers portray Greg Marmelarde as impotent and the implied perverse sexual attraction Doug Nedermier has for his horse (see the way he feeds "Trooper" a carrot) are sick delights!

 

Could be, but I don't recall us teens in the late 70s being nostalgic for 1962. In my case, any "nostalgia" I had for the early 60s was well covered by American Graffiti, since I've always been into hot rods & the like.

 

My parents got divorced when I was 10, and my dad decided to be my buddy and start taking me to R-rated movies (without my mom and sister of course). Animal House was the first of these. I had never seen a naked woman in a film before. Thanks Dad!

I think your preference for one movie over the other depends on your age. Animal House is a very '70s film while Caddyshack is VERY '80s. I love them both. However, as good as Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Rodney Dangerfield, and Ted Knight are, none of them have the screen presence of John Belushi. The man was a force of nature.

 

I couldn't care less about college, don't find Animal House that funny.

I couldn't care less about golf, but Caddyshack is hilarious.

Side note: You can "see" what Chevy Chase would have been like in the Tim Matheson role by watching Ryan Reynolds' performance in Van Wilder ("wholesale stealing from Chevy Chase" is what Reynolds calls it).

 

I think guys who watch it are nostalgic for the time in their life when they had ride-or-die buddies like the Deltas.

 

Maybe off-topic but I've found Ryan Reynolds entire acting style to be an imitation of Chevy Chase.

 

Animal House has been a favorite of mine since first seeing it at a drive-in when it first came out. I don't think I've ever laughed so much at a movie (though ingesting certain substances may have had something to do with it )

I hadn't seem Caddyshack in years, so I watched it yesterday (free with ads on Tubi). It's a fun movie to watch on a hot summer afternoon. But it doesn't have a Toga Party, Otis Day and The Nights doing Shout, or the actor who voiced Jonny Quest. I much prefer Bill Murray's work in Meatballs, Stripes, and Ghostbusters.

 

Possibly so. But in 1978 & 1980, the years those two films were released, what exactly did our age group have to be nostalgic about in that era? We were still in our teens/early 20s, (I turned 19 in 1980, when Caddyshack was released), so by & large, many of us were still living that way.

 

I mean when people look back on the movies now.

 

That's of course quite possible. I was mainly thinking of when I saw the films on initial release. I always liked Animal House more than Caddyshack from the start. Caddyshack's best comedy moments might equal or even occasionally surpass those in Animal House, but it's neither as consistently good nor as consistently funny as Animal House is to me.

As I said, Caddyshack does meander a great deal, & never seems to make up it's mind if it wants to be a broad slapstick comedy, or a warm & fuzzy coming of age comedy. It's stuck between those two poles, & never realizes it's full potential for me anyway. And I do have both on DVD & love them. It's just easy to see which is the better film, & not just as a personal favorite of any of us. Even where Animal House wanders a bit, (such as the road trip), they never lost sight of the anarchy inherent in it's comedy. Caddyshack does, & the coming of age plot point takes up too much running time & drags the film down in comparison.

 

The only flaw in your idea is the two movies were literally released 3 days shy of 2 years apart, so the desired audience for them was virtually the same, males in their late teens/early 20s. I saw Animal House right after I turned 17, & saw Caddyshack before I turned 19, so the 70s/80s dichotomy is blurred for many of us in that age group that saw the films on initial release. There's just not enough different as defined by the eras to make that assertion, because the films are too close together timewise to make such a distinction.

 

Both are funny, no need to yell "Food fight!" and throw cafeteria food at each other. But I still like Animal House better.

 

Now wa-ay-ay-ay-ait a minute...