Movie Review: "Revenge of the Nerds" (1984)

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Movie: "Revenge of the Nerds"
Director: Jeff Kanew
Year: 1984
Rating: R
Running Time: 1 hour, 30 minutes

Two longtime friends and life-long nerds, Lewis Skolnick (Robert Carradine) and Gilbert Lowell (Anthony Edwards), start life on their own as incoming freshman at Adams College. They are hoping college will be much different than high school, but they quickly find out it's not...well, at least it's not for them. Almost immediately upon arriving on campus, they are heckled by the jock fraternity house the Alpha Betas. When these same jocks burn down their frat during a party, they overrun the freshman dorm, kicking Lewis, Gilbert and all the other freshman out, forcing them to live in the school's gym. The college tries to make it up to the freshman by allowing them to join fraternities. Of course, none of the Nerds are not chosen to participate. Lewis and Gilbert join up with other nerds Toshiro (Brian Tochi), Lamar (Larry B. Scott), Poindexter (Timothy Busfield), Wormser (Andrew Cassesse), and Booger (Curtis Armstrong) to get their own house and form their own fraternity. They continue to be tormented by the Alpha Betas and have decided it's time to fight back. They use pranks as a form of revenge and attempt to win control of the Greek Counsel in order to get fair treatment.

This 1980's cult classic boasts a hilarious cast of misfit oddball characters and an equally funny script. It's reminiscent of the raunchy comedies that were very prevalent of this time period. This is the ultimate underdog tale of nerds who have to fight adversity their wholes lives simply based on the way they look and act, eventually come out on top. Though it's a very stereotypical portrayal of nerds versus jocks, that doesn't make it any less fun to watch. Unfortunately, it does have quite a bit of sexism, homophobia, and racism, and this will deter some people from watching this movie. It's also an extremely generalized and cliched view of college life in general. The jocks party and grunt all the time as well as rule the school, while the nerds are forced out of their residence, picked on, hazed, and made fun of throughout the entire film. Anthony Edwards and Robert Carradine put on solid performance as Gilbert and Lewis, and there are a lot of secondary characters that put on quite a show as well, most memorably that of Curtis Armstrong as Booger and Donald Gibb as Ogre. A very young, very thin John Goodman also pops up in this movie. It's nothing fancy and it's entirely a fluffy comedy, but it's fun to watch from time to time.

My Rating: 6.5/10
BigJ's Rating: 8.5/10
IMDB's Rating: 6.6/10
Rotten Tomatoes Rating: 73%
Do we recommend this movie: Yes!
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One year ago, we were watching: "The Wolverine"