Revenge of the Nerds - not horrible

As hard as it may be to believe, I had never seen this movie. Beyond that, I knew almost nothing about it. I knew the main character had an obnoxious laugh and that was it. So imagine my surprise when I saw that both Timothy Busfield and John Goodman were in this thing! Amazing.

This movie defies logic, physics, belief, and common decency. It is sexist, raciest (oh so many races), stupid, and it was actually funny at times.

The plot in a nutshell: two nerds go to Adams College (home of the Atoms) just as the jocks burn down their frat house. The football team, needing a place to stay, takes over the freshmen dorm, which knocks the freshmen into the gym until frats choose members and let them move in. Naturally, the two nerds and a collection of stereotypes (the affeminate Black gay guy; the violin-playing, thick-glasses-wearing redhead named Poindexter [Busfield!]; the booger-eating doofus; a 13-year-old geek; and others) are left out and find a house of their own.

They renovate the house and apply to start their own frat. The Greek Court (?) rejects them because they don’t have a national house backing them. So they convince the Lambda Lambda Lambda (a Black frat) to take them on. The tri-Lambs have a party, but the jerk jocks trash their house and ruin it, so they retaliate by putting Liquid Heat (?) in their jock straps and breaking into the cheerleaders’ sorority house and hooking up cameras which have the ability to see into any room in the place, even though there are just two cameras located in the attic. (I said this movie defies logic.)

Then there are the Greek Games and, naturally, the tri-Lambs win even though they are nerds. The jocks are going to beat them up but the tri-Lambs have some of their frat brothers from another school show up and protect them. The end. Oh wait, they also sing the most 80s song ever.

Seriously, though, if you wanted to show a 10-year-old what the 80s were like, this would be the perfect movie to show them. The music is terrific, the computers are excellent, and there’s even a robot maid! Seriously, 80s.

There are some good laughs in this movie, and everything Tim Busfield does is hilarious. John Goodman as a football coach is funny, but only because in a few years he’d be 50 pounds heavier and married to Roseanne Barr on her show.  And of course, there’s Ogre’s reaction when he loses the burping contest. No one – and I mean no one! – should be that upset about losing a burping contest. I’d like to make a .gif of that and watch it for hours.

This is already more words than this movie deserves, so I’ll keep it simple. This is an incredibly stupid movie, but I don’t regret watching it for a second. In fact, when I saw there was a gay guy among the nerds, I was really afraid that we were going to be treated to 90 minutes of gay bashing or homophobia, but surprising, there was very little said about him. He even brought a date to the party, and no one said boo. So that was nice. The javelin throw, however, was not. This is a movie of stereotypes, but it actually treats them with love, which makes the thing watchable where many movies of this period are not. So enjoy a few laughs, relive your college days, and turn back the clock. Or watch any of the three sequels. Or watch Animal House.

Revenge of the Nerds: 3 of Patrick Swayze’s 6 abs.