Review: Revenge of the Nerds (1984)

Revenge of the Nerds (1984)

Rated R

Score: 2 out of 5

Revenge of the Nerds is a rancid film... and worst of all, it's one that I might have enjoyed and hailed as one of the funniest movies ever made about ten to fifteen years ago. It is a well-made movie. It has some funny jokes and sweet scenes that still hold up even now, it has a good cast and soundtrack, and on the surface, a campus comedy in the vein of Animal House about put-upon nerds taking down the entitled jocks and frat boys is a great idea. That last part alone has basically assured this film's status as an '80s comedy classic: it's practically guaranteed to appeal to any teenagers and young adults who are into geeky interests and feel disrespected by their peers for it. There's a reason why so many fans of this movie bristle at criticism of it, because for a lot of them, this was one of the few mainstream comedies, especially from that time, in which people like them were the heroes and romantic leads instead of the butt of jokes. In that regard alone, it was easily years ahead of its time.

Unfortunately, it all comes with an acidic aftertaste. I can get past the gay and ethnic stereotypes, as well as the celebration of binge drinking and overall loutishness. After all, this is an R-rated '80s sex comedy, mainstream filmmakers in that genre back then were very much of their time when it came to that sort of thing, and it doesn't really affect the plot in any meaningful way. I wish I could say the same for the multiple scenes in which our protagonists sexually harass and assault the hot sorority sisters. I remember the exact moment at which, in hindsight, I really should've turned this movie off, and it only got worse from there, progressively -- and unintentionally -- painting the people we're supposed to be rooting for as a bunch of perverts and sexual predators no better than the Alpha Beta jocks who bully them, without any recognition of this fact. If I'd venture a guess, I'd say that half of the jokes in this movie, especially after the halfway point, had me cringing more than laughing. Call me a pussy, call me overly sensitive, call me what you want. It doesn't change the fact that, while I think that Revenge of the Nerds still has its moments, I also think that large portions of it are nearly unwatchable now.

Our protagonists are Lewis and Gilbert, two childhood friends who are both newly-enrolled freshmen at Adams College in Arizona. Being walking nerd stereotypes (at least as imagined by Hollywood in the '80s, meaning that they're basically handsome young men with thick glasses and pocket protectors), they are soon picked on by the Alpha Beta fraternity, composed of the school's elite athletes who essentially control the school, to the point where they even bully the dean into giving them their way. A great example of this comes when their dumbassery causes them to accidentally burn down their frat house, and they and Coach Harris convince the dean to let them move into the freshman dorm and kick out all of its current occupants, forcing them to sleep in makeshift housing in the gym. Thus begins a quest for revenge against both the Alpha Betas and their opposite-sex partners in crime, the snobbish Pi Delta Pi sorority, as Lewis and Gilbert start a fraternity of their own and recruit all the other outcasts who are sick of being spit on.

At first, I was wondering if the reputation that this film has earned in recent years as a particularly rapey sex comedy was all it was cracked up to be. Yes, it had some questionable racial and sexual humor, most notably with the flamboyantly gay guy Lamar and the Japanese student Takashi, who were both one-note stereotypes. But some of the other scenes from that first forty-five minutes had some real heart to them. The scenes showing the Alpha Betas getting handed everything they want on a silver platter at the expense of everybody else, while obviously blown up to comical extremes, resonate even more nowadays in an age where many major universities can often seem like they're run by their athletics departments and their corporate sponsors while out-of-control fraternities resist any attempt to rein them in. The Alpha Betas' hatred of the nerds is purely one-dimensional, never given any explanation beyond "jocks hate nerds", but Ted McGinley does a great job as their elitist douchebag leader Stan Gable, as does John Goodman giving his best John Goodman as their coach. The more questionable elements of the nerds affiliating with the black fraternity Lambda Lambda Lambda are kept in the background rather than pushed to the forefront, the Tri-Lambdas' leader Jefferson not amused in the slightest and only letting them affiliate on a probationary period because their bylaws say they have to. The scene where they win the pan-Greek Games with an electronic music performance was a very fun little musical number that still holds up. And when the girls of Omega Mu, the nerd sorority and the female counterparts to our heroes, show up, it looked to be going to some interesting places with them.

And then came the panty raid.

Hoo boy, the panty raid. Arguably the film's signature scene, to the point where the special edition DVD I had is called the "Panty Raid Edition". Going in, and especially once the scene opened with the Mission: Impossible theme, I thought that it would involve the Tri-Lambdas sneaking into the Pi Delta Pi sorority house, stealing their underwear from their dressers, and slipping out sight unseen with the girls none the wiser, with a few set pieces involving them avoiding unwanted attention. It would've still been pretty fucked-up, but a frat boy spy movie parody like this would've had a lot of potential for funny moments to it. Instead, the Tri-Lambdas get busted quickly and immediately start rampaging through the sorority house, barging into girls' rooms in order to steal their panties -- which turns out to have been just a diversion for the real offense, installing hidden cameras throughout the building in order to film the girls naked and my God this movie is literally celebrating revenge porn. As in, nowadays they'd all be rightfully doing hard time in federal prison for the shit they pull in the panty raid scene, especially given what they do with that footage later in the movie in what has to be one of the most vile gags I've ever seen in a sex comedy -- at least until they topped it a few minutes later. At around the halfway mark, this film took what had been merely undertones in the first half (which, while problematic, still felt essentially good-hearted) and heightened them to the point where they felt outright malicious, especially in light of incidents like the big celebrity nude photo hack from a few years ago. This was arguably even worse, since these photos and videos were taken without the girls' knowledge. It wasn't just the treatment of women, either; Lamar's character went from just being a gay stereotype to having his "limp wrist" become important to a scene.

That is where Revenge of the Nerds failed for me. For all it tries to portray the nerds as the utter antithesis of the jocks, and for all that Robert Carradine and Anthony Edwards try to make Lewis and Gilbert into interesting characters, the writing gives them the exact same faults. Lewis tells the snobbish popular girl Betty Childs all about how nerds are better lovers than jocks right after he basically rapes her (specifically, he wore a mask and pretended he was her boyfriend Stan), and she falls in love with him after. The Omega Mu girls are quickly pushed to the background, with Judy, the one sympathetic female character who gets much screen time, being a shallow love interest if ever there was one, little more than a prop. The longer the film went on, the more I found myself sympathizing with the Alpha Betas and wondering if, in spite of their snobbish elitism and thuggery, they didn't have a point in hating the nerds. Watching the film's uncritical portrayal of the Tri-Lambdas' awful behavior was like watching in embryo all of the worst elements of geek culture that have come out of the woodwork in the past decade, as the nerds spend the second half of the film basically out-jocking the jocks and destroying whatever sympathy I had for them.

Oh, and Lewis' laugh was like nails on a chalkboard.

As an aside, recently I've been listening to the podcast '80s All Over by film critics Drew McWeeny and Scott Weinberg, in which they review every film that came out in the 1980s, one month at a time, in order to get the most accurate snapshot of the decade's cinema that they can beyond just the shortlist of classics that have been immortalized by pop culture and the nostalgia machine. One thing that they've found, watching movies like Porky's, Zapped!, and Private School, is that many of the teen sex comedies of the '80s are basically snapshots of rape culture in how they took sexual assault, date rape, and other sex crimes and played them off for laughs. I'm bringing up '80s All Over not just because I love the podcast, but because, as of this writing, their most recent episode covered July of 1984 -- the month in which this movie came out. I'm willing to bet that their discussion of this movie is going to be a distinctly unflattering one.

The Bottom Line

Just how nasty this movie gets kind of sneaks up on you. I like to pretend that the entire second half of it never happened, and that it continued to be the dated-but-funny film that it was for the first forty-five minutes. This movie's intent probably wasn't to prove that nerds can be just as awful as jocks, but man, did it do so.