For decades, it was musicals and plays from Broadway making the trek to the silver screen. Now, with finances being the way they are on the Great White Way, theatrical producers are turning more and more to the world of film to adapt for their next stage production. Although, my knee-jerk reaction to the latest transder is that I can’t see anyway that it will ever work.

The Hollywood Reporter is telling us that Universal Pictures Stage Productions is adapting the 1978 comedy Animal House for the Broadway stage as a muscial. Yes, as a musical.

The adaptation has some talent behind it. The musical with be directed and choreographed by Casey Nicolaw, who was nominated for a Tony Award in both capacities for his work on The Book of Mormon (he won the directing award). Book will be from Michael Minick, known most for the well-received off-Broadway production, Sex Lives of Our Parents. The Barenaked Ladies are providing the score, and, one assumes, songs for the production, thus completing the lifeline of an pop alternative rock band from the 1990 (start indie, build a fan following, get signed by a major label, put out a couple albums before you breakthrough, put out a couple more albums that are popular, dip in popularity, get dropped by label, go back to indie labels, lose a founding member and, now, apparently, provide the score for a Broadway musical).

The band did score Shakespeare’s As You Like It  for the Stratford Festival of Canada in 2005, but that was when Steven Page was still in the group and he took a major role in the scoring.

The policy of turning films into Broadway musicals, whether they fit or not, has been a mock-worthy pursuit since the disastrous Carrie musical in the 1980s, but this project seems to be having fun pokes at it from the get-go. This is what screenwriter Mark Evanier had to say about the adaptation:

And I can already imagine the promotions: Half-price tix on Toga Night if you come dressed in a bedsheet. Or they’ll do it like a Gallagher concert and the first three rows will be wearing trash bags to protect their clothes during the Food Fight.

Evanier might be jesting in good humor, but he does point out certain limitations in bringing Animal House to the stage. The comedy might not seem like a sweeping epic, but, from a stage perspective, that’s essentially what it is. Just off the top of my head I can think of at least six different locations where pivotal scenes take place (Outside Delta House, inside Delta House, Dean Wormer’s office, the school cafeteria, the road house where they see Otis Day and the Knights, and the main street) that will have to be presented on stage. Not to mention the finale, one of the most important parts of the film, that is one big orgy of chaos and destruction involving marching bands, parade floats and collapsing bandstands. That would be near impossible to present on stage anywhere close to the way it appears on screen, let alone in such a way that it could be reset for a performance every night and two on Wednesays and weekends.

Perhaps I am just being overly negative. The musical is still in the development stage and who know when, or if, it will hit the stage. Maybe they will figure out a way to make it all work ou

In a multi-part series, Comic Book Film Editor William Gatevackes will be tracing the history of comic book movies from the earliest days of the film serials to today’s big blockbusters and beyond. Along with the history lesson, Bill will be covering some of the most prominent comic book films over the years and why they were so special. This time, we discuss the strange journey of Heavy Metal from Europe to America to the Silver Screen.

National Lampoon has given us a lot over the years. It has given us writers such as Doug Kenney, Michael O’Donaghue, P.J. O’Rourke and John Hughes. It gave exposure to comic actors like John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Christopher Guest, Chevy Chase and Bill Murray. It has even “Presented” films like Animal House, Vacation, and Van Wilder.

It has also, in a roundabout way, given us the film Heavy Metal, too. Well, at least the magazine the movie was based on.

Heavy Metal magazine began as the French magazine Métal Hurlant, an anthology graphic magazine started in 1974 by legendary French artists Jean Giraud A.K.A. Mœbius and Philippe Druillet. It presented comics drawn and written from a distinctly European point of view, along with text articles on all areas of popular culture.

National Lampoon publisher Leonard Mogel was in Paris to try and get Lampoon published in France when he stumbled across Métal Hurlant (which stands for “Howling Metal”) and saw it as something that might work in the United States. He licensed the magazine, renamed it Heavy Metal to have it resonate with American audiences more and started publishing it on high-stock glossy paper as a monthly magazine.

The mag gave European artists such as Giraud, Milo Manara and Esteban Maroto exposure in the U.S. as their work in Métal Hurlant was translated and reprinted in Heavy Metal. It featured work from such luminaries as H.R. Giger, Stephen King, Harlan Ellison and William S. Burroughs in its pages. And it published serials by artists like Arthur Suydam, Bernie Wrightson  and Howard Cruse, among others.

It’s these serials that got adapted into the 1981 film, Heavy Metal, which like the magazine was an anthology of stories inspired and written by creators that worked for the periodical.

The film featured six installments with a framing sequence tied together by one mystical object, a glowing green sphere of unearthly power called the Loc-Nar. The individual installments feature the distinctive variety of styles that were at home in the magazine, ranging from futuristic noir to historical horror, from imaginative fantasy to satiric humor. The film was produced by Ivan Reitman, featured the voices of SCTVers John Candy, Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy and Harold Ramis. And it had an eclectic soundtrack that featured Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult, Stevie Nicks, Devo and Cheap Trick.  That line up of musicians was one of the reasons why the film took so long to be released on home video, as nailing down the rights to the music became an issue.

In 1992, longtime Heavy Metal fan and co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Kevin Eastman bought the magazine and set himself up as publisher and editor. Heavy Metal 2000 was released early on in Eastman’sreign as publisher, but had more to do with the man then the magazine.

Heavy Metal 2000 was not adapted from a story that appeared in the pages of the magazine, but rather from a 1995 miniseries Eastman did with artist Simon Bisley called The Melting Pot which was published by Kitchen Sink Press. The original comic was not an anthology, so the film contains only one story, not six like the first Heavy Metal. It does feature a diverse soundtrack with many songs from popular alternative and metal acts of the day, like Queens of the Stone Age and System of a Down. And a glowing green rock does play a role in the proceedings, to sort of tie it in with the first film.

The plot focuses on Julie (voiced by, and most certainly inspired by, Eastman’s then-wife, B-movie actress and former Penthouse Pet of the Year Julie Strain) fighting an evil tyrant with the power of self-regeneration. She fights to free her sister from the tyrant’s captivity, all the while trying to end his reign of terror.

There is another film in the works, at the very least loosely connected to the Heavy Metal brand called War of the Worlds: Goliath.

The film is a sequel to H.G. Wells’ novel, War of the Words, and appears to be some kind of steampunk manga film. It is voiced by Adrian Paul and Adam Baldwin, among others. It is set for a 2012 release, however, footage was shown during the 2009 San Diego Comic Con with a promised 2010 DVD release. Since it was already delayed two years, I’d say that 2012 date should be taken with a grain of salt.

There has been a planned remake of the original in the works, first helmed by David Fincher and then by Robert Rodriguez. Considering Rodriguez’s track record of getting films he is attached to made is about one in four, it might be a while if there will be another Heavy Metal film in the future.

Next time, Swamp Thing gets revitalized in the comics and a film in theaters within years of one another. Did one have any effect on the other?

The bumper or tag scene. It’s that short scene that comes after the end credits have finished, a little extra for those in the audience who have sat through the scroll list of names of the films grips, sound crew, special effects technicians and caterers. It usually doesn’t have much bearing on the preceding film, but is just a nice little Easter egg for those who stuck around.

Although cinema is over a century old, the tag scene has only come about I the last couple of decades. Up until the late-1960s, most films had their credits in the beginning, just a quick on-screen card or two to note the main crew members behind the film. Sometimes, the main cast list was reprised at the end of a film, but that was all. But as film loaders, grips, focus pullers, stand by painters, transportation captains, boom mic operators and more were added, the credits were shifted to the end of films, where they could play out while the audience left. It wouldn’t be long until someone decided that just because the credits were rolling it didn’t mean that the film was over.

Let’s take a look at the five most influential of these mid- and post-credit scenes.

Airplane!

When David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker released Airplane! in the summer of 1980, they wound up rewriting many of the rules for film comedy. And one of those rules was that the laughs didn’t have to stop just because the films credits had started. Those Airplane! audience members who didn’t jump up and head for the exists the moment when Otto and his inflatable stewardess flew the TransAmerican jetliner off into a hail of fireworks were treated to a couple of gags buried with the film’s end credits crawl. (Generally In Charge Of A Lot Of Things – Mike Finnell, Author of A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens)

The topper came at the end of the credits, though with a quick little scene featuring the man in the cab who Ted Stryker (Robert Hayes) abandoned on the curbside of LAX at the beginning of the film. Although the film cuts back to him twice during its first 50 minutes, he isn’t seen for the rest of the picture. But Zucker, Abrams and Zucker hadn’t forgotten the poor soul and cut back to let us know that he was still waiting for Stryker to return to take him on his trip. But after waiting nearly the entire run-time of the film for his cabbie to come back, the now slightly frustrated man vows, “I’ll give him another twenty minutes! But that’s it!” A funny moment and one that is noteworthy as it appears to be the first time that a button scene appeared in a film.

“When In Hollywood, Visit Universal Studios. Ask for Babs.”

While not technically a tag scene, there is a joke that comes at the end of National Lampoon’s Animal House’s credits that calls back to something from the main part of the film. Specifically, the film’s closing moments revealing the futures facing members of the Delta and Omega fraternities. Martha Smith’s character of Babs is revealed to have become a tour guide at Universal Studios. At the time it was standard for Universal Studios films to have an end title card promoting their studio tour in Hollywood and Landis decided to give a last wink to any of the audience still in the theater by changing the card to read “When In Hollywood, Visit Universal Studios. Ask for Babs.”

The gag soon became one of Landis’s many signature touches; perhaps only second to his use of the phrase “See you next Wednesday.” He would use it for all of his subsequent movies made for Universal including The Blues Brothers (1980), An American Werewolf In London (1981), Coming Soon (1982), Into The Night (1985), Amazon Women On The Moon (1987) and Blues Brothers 2000. It also appears on the Animal House DVD supplement/mockumentary Where Are They Now?: A Delta Alumni Update.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

One of the refreshing aspects of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was the amount of times that Matthew Broderick’s titular character broke the fourth wall to speak directly to the audience. It was something that hadn’t really been done in cinematic comedy since the days of the Marx Brothers, Bob Hope and Ollie and Johnson’s Hellzapoppin’. It is a conceit that carries right through to after the credits when Ferris pops back on screen and tells everyone to go home. Probably not a gag that really works in this day and age of home video, but it is still a nice last moment to end the film on.

While I can find no documentation to back it up, I have to wonder if this button scene started as an improvised joke on the set. Hughes was open to improvisation on the set and the moment where Ferris is singing “Danke Shone” in the shower grew out of Broderick practicing the song for the parade sequence while the crew was setting up the shower scene.

Wild Things

While not technically button scenes, there are several short scenes in the 1998 thriller Wild Things that were embedded into the closing credits crawl that revealed that what audiences thought they saw in the bulk of the film might not have been what actually happened. Which is saying something as the movie has several twists and turns.

By this time, it wasn’t completely unusual for a film to have additional material in the credits. Through the late 70s and early 80s, Burt Reynolds would customarily put shooting outtakes into the credits of his films to show how much fun the cast and crew had while making the film. It was a practice that Jackie Chan copied for his Hong Kong action films after he appeared in The Cannonball Run, but he used it to show that how dangerous many of the stunts he and his team performed really were. But Wild Things was one of the first to include material which could legitimately be called vital narrative material. (Yes, I know Ferris Bueller has the credit sequence scene with Rooney’s car getting towed and him having to hitch a ride on the bus, but it is a scene that isn’t really necessary to the story.) And in just a couple of years, the idea of narrative material at the end of the credit roll would be placed into ply by the next film on our list.

Iron Man

On May 2, 2008, comic book movie fans were buzzing about how Marvel Studios’ Iron Man may or may not end. Rumors had been circulating that Samuel L. Jackson had filmed a cameo for the film but early reviews didn’t mention it. It wasn’t until the first midnight screenings ended on the East Coast and folks took to the internet confirmed the existence of such a scene after the credits. Of course, the scene also opened up a flurry of new questions, most specifically, what did Jackson’s character Nick Fury mean when he referred to “The Avengers Initiative”?

The following Monday, during a quarterly earnings conference call Marvel formerly announced their plans to build an interconnected series of superhero franchise films that would culminate in one giant crossover/team-up film, The Avengers, confirming what fans were wildly speculating about over the previous 72 hours. And with only one scheduling change – Thor was originally marked to come out last summer and The Avengers was slotted for this summer – the studio has managed to keep on track for what could be considered the most ambitious bit of franchise management seen yet. And Marvel has continued to use button scenes at the end of all their films to help build that shared universe and tease the next film on their schedule. The result is the high-level of anticipation for next summer’s The Avengers even among non-comics fans.

In a multi-part series, Comic Book Film Editor William Gatevackes will be tracing the history of comic book movies from the earliest days of the film serials to today’s big blockbusters and beyond. Along with the history lesson, Bill will be covering some of the most prominent comic book films over the years and why they were so special. This time, we’ll take a look at EC Comics and the impact they had on the silver screen.

When the superhero was waning in popularity during the late 1940s and early 1950s, there were a number of other genres that rose up to take its place. Comics that told stories of romance, the wild west, war, true crime and horror became the most popular comics on the market.

The company that excelled at these genres was EC Comics. Started in 1944 by Max Gaines after his All-American Publishing, merged with DC Comics, the company’s initials originally stood for “Educational Comics.” Max Gaines intended his comic books to teach kids about religion and the bible. One of its most popular titles from this time period was “Picture Stories from the Bible,” which is ironic considering the content the company would become known for.

When Max Gaines was tragically killed in a boating accident in 1947, his son William Gaines took over. Bill Gaines changed the focus of the comics published from bible stories and teaching science and history to telling stories of twisted horror, gripping combat and unusual science fiction. Bill Gaines also changed the name of the company to “Entertaining Comics.” Thus, a legend was born.

EC Comics were known for quality tales of horror, typically drenched in gore with a surprise twist in the end. The stories often times had a social or political message as part of its subtext and the company hired the best writers and artists of the day. The company was also almost responsible for the destruction of the comic book medium in the 1950s.

The graphic violence and gore in the EC Comics—and other companies comics as well—caught the eye of a child psychologist named Frederik Wertham. Wertham started writing articles about the dangers of horror comics like the ones EC published in 1948, culminating in the infamous (to comic fans) book Seduction of the Innocent. The furor Wertham helped to raise caused comic books to come under attack, even to the point that they were called into question under a Congressional hearing concerning juvenile delinquency.

The comic companies were scared of being forced out of business. Gaines suggested a self-regulatory code agency that would monitor the comics from within to get the government off their backs. This was the worst suggestion Gaines could have made because the organization created, the Comics Code Authority, set its sights on EC Comics as public enemy #1. The other publishers saw EC Comics as an attractive nuisance, drawing the attention of the witch-hunt through their gore-laden books.  The Comics Code made in incredibly difficult for EC Comics to continue publishing books, and by 1956, the company closed up shop.

While Entertaining Comics lasted less than a decade, their influence was wide reaching, as exemplified by the fact that filmmakers were willing to adapt EC stories a full 16 years after the company closed its doors.

British horror films took on a certain cache during the late 60s to early 70s, mostly due to Hammer Studios output in the late 50s and early 60s. By the time 1972 rolled around, there was an explosion of British film studios specializing in horror. One such studio, Amicus Productions, took a special interest in the EC line of comic books. In 1972, they produced a film based on the EC books titled Tales from the Crypt:

Watching that trailer, you can see where Edgar Wright got the inspiration for the mock ad for “Don’t!” that was attached to the theatrical release of Grindhouse, can’t you?.

This film adapted five stories from the whole line of EC horror comics—Tales from the Crypt, Vault of Horror and Haunt of Fear—linked with a framing sequence about tourists visiting ancient tombs. The eclectic cast included award-winning actors such as Ralph Richardson and Patrick Magee, horror legends like Peter Cushing, and a pair of actors who would become best known by American audiences for their work on U.S. television –Joan Collins and Roy Dotrice.

The film proved successful and a sequel, The Vault of Horror, was released in 1973.

This film featured an intriguing cast which included Denholm Elliot, Terry-Thomas, Glynis Johns and a pre-Doctor Who Tom Baker. The film followed a similar format to Tales from the Crypt, adapting stories from the Tales from the Crypt and Shock SuspenStories comics with a framing sequence tying them all together.

Another “comic” that EC is known for was MAD, which was published in comic book form for its first 23 issues before moving over to the magazine format which it is published in today. What might not be as well known is that MAD once had its name attached to a film.

In 1980, in response to the popularity of fellow humor magazine National Lampoon’s association with the film Animal House, William Gaines was looking for a film he could co-brand MAD with. The magazine had a deal with Warner Brothers to develop a movie, but the scripts that they suggested didn’t meet Gaines’ muster and a script Gaines favored didn’t meet Warners expectations. Frustrated, a script focusing on the adventures of a bunch of kids in a military academy crossed Gaines’ desk and he decided that it was close enough in tone to what he was looking for to lend MAD’s name to.

That film was MAD Magazine Presents Up the Academy, the movie that was so bad that it caused more than one entity, including MAD, to remove their name from it.

The film, directed by Robert Downey, father to future comic book movie star Robert Downey Jr., was a critical and commercial bomb. Ron Liebman, who played one of the adult leads, had his name removed from the film and promotional materials. William Gaines actually paid money to have MAD’s name removed from the home video release of the film (The MAD association was put back on for all videos and cable showings after Gaines passed away). MAD would lend its name to more than one TV show in the future, but would never appear on the big screen again.

Next installment, we will conclude our look at EC Comics as we view the influence of the comics on creators as varied as George Romero, Stephen King and John Hughes.

As this week marks the release of National Lampoon’s Animal House on blu-ray disc as well as the 33r anniversary of the film’s release in theaters, we thought it would be a good time to take a look at the script for a sequel to the classic comedy that was written but never made.

National Lampoon’s Animal House II
Second Draft Screenplay by Matty Simmons, Michael Simmons, Andrew B Simmons
Draft Date May 6, 1982

The early 1980s were a troubled time for the National Lampoon magazine. In the previous decade the magazine burst into American pop culture with a slash-and-burn attitude towards comedy that perfectly suited the post-Watergate cynicism that was sweeping the country. In short time, it quickly became a household name and spun off a popular syndicated radio series. However, the magazine’s popularity didn’t really reach its zenith until the release of the film National Lampoon’s Animal House in the summer of 1978.

But as the cynical 70s gave way to the 1980s and Ronald Reagan’s vision of the country as a shining city on a hill, Nat Lamp (as it is often abbreviated) found its fortunes floundering. The magaine’s three founders – Doug Kenney, Henry Beard and Robert Hoffman – had accepted a buyout clause in their contract back as far back as 1975 and by the end of the decade, many of the magazine’s original staff had already moved on. Some, such as the brilliant Michael O’Donoghue and Anne Beatts, had gone to work in television, helping to launch a little weekend, late-night sketch show for NBC called Saturday Night. Others went west, lured by the big money to be found in Hollywood.

The magazine’s circulation was decreasing and it still hadn’t found a way to follow up on the success of Animal House at the movies. National Lampoon’s Vacation (1983), which screenwriter John Hughes based on one of his Lampoon short stories, was still a year away from being released when Animal House producer and Nat Lamp publisher Matty Simmons decided that the best way to reinvigorate the cinematic brand name of National Lampoon would be returning to Faber College for a second Animal House film.

This would not be the first time an Animal House sequel was considered. After the film became a hit in the summer of 1978, a follow up story was conceived. It was set five years after the events of the first film in 1967′s “Summer of Love” and would feature the Deltas coming together to attend the marriage of their fraternity brother Pinto in Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco. Animal House co-screenwriter Chrris Miller got as far as writing a treatment for the film with Lampoon writer John Weidman, but Universal passed on the idea, reportedly because the recently released American Graffiti sequel also had some similar elements concerning hippies and the Summer of Love and had died at the box office.

There was also an attempt to bring Animal House to television in 1979 as the series Delta House failed as well. Probably inspired by the success CBS had with bring Robert Altman’s anti-war comedy M*A*S*H to television, Delta House was a half-hour sitcom shot in the style of the original film and not on the rather flat, fake sets that most sitcoms were produced on. And while there was no studio audience, much like the early seasons of M*A*S*H, there was a laugh track, supposedly to cue the audience at home as to when they should laugh. The show featured the return of Animal House cast members John Vernon (Dean Wormer), Stephen Furst (Flounder), Bruce McGill (D-Day), and James Widdoes (Hoover) and the pilot episode (“The Legacy,” airdate January 18, 1979) was written by Animal House‘s scriptwriting trio of Harold Ramis, Doug Kenney and Miller.

But despite initially good ratings, and five of its 13 episodes being written by Nat Lamp alum John Hughes, the series only lasted four months. Reportedly producers Simmons and Ivan Reitman had quickly become burned out with arguing with network executives over the content of the show.

Perhaps looking forward to producing an Animal House project without the strictures imposed by television, Simmons decided to go ahead and start developing a sequel somewhere in late 1981/early 1982. There was just one problem- The original writers of Animal House were unavailable. Miller was off working on Anne Beatts television show Square Pegs, which, for better or worse, gave the world Sarah Jessica Parker. Harold Ramis was off working on SCTV. And Doug Kenney was dead, having died under mysterious circumstances with no one knowing if he had accidentally fallen or purposefully jumped off the side of a mountain in Hawaii where he was vacationing following the completion of his work on the comedy Caddyshack.

So Simmons, perhaps bolstered by the fact that he shared a writer’s credit for two episodes of Delta House, took it upon himself to pen the screenplay in conjunction with Michael and Andrew B Simmons. (These two might be Matty Simmons’s sons, but I can’t confirm that online anywhere. There was a Michael Simmons credited as being the singer of the Delta House theme song.)

It’s been five years since the brothers of Delta House wrecked havoc on the Annual Faber College Homecoming Parade and several members of the frat decide that it might be safe to venture back for a weekend visit to their old college haunts. Arriving, though, they are horrified at the changes that their beloved fraternity has undergone. After keeping it closed for half a decade, Dean Wormer has allowed Delta House to reopen, only to fill it with a collection of nerds and geeks – the type to never cause the problems that have been associated with the Deltas in the past. And so Boone, Otter, D-Day, Pinto and Flounder take it upon themselves to instruct their new frat brothers in their fraternity’s infamous history. They almost immediately run afoul of Wormer and the members of Omega House, lead by their old nemesis Doug Neidermeyer. Wormer wants to run the returning Deltas off campus before they sour filthy rich alumni Milton Vanderslaag on donating more money to the college. Things escalate to the point where the Deltas enter into a bet with Vanderslaag, Wormer and the Omegas which puts the future existence of Delta House at risk. To win the bet, all they have to do is best the Omegas in two out of three competitions, contests that the Deltas really aren’t suited for at all.

To be honest, when I started reading this I went in with severely lowered expectations. Animal House is a classic and is one of my few favorite comedies that doesn’t feature the Marx Brothers, another group of outsiders who frequently thumbed their noses at the uptight establishment. And there are moments where I found myself liking what I was reading. But when I put down the script at the end, I had to wonder if my positive response wasn’t because of the affection that I hold for the characters, because this screenplay has a lot of flaws.

Giving credit where it’s due, the Simmonses do manage to approximate the voices of most of the characters. A line from Flounder, Boone or Otter usually reads like something they’d say. Of course, this could partially be attributed to the fact some of the characters’ lines and actions are just reprises of favorite bits from the first film. When Boone and Otter are at center field at the start of the climactic football game, they once again do their “Eric Stratton, damn glad to meet you”/”That was Eric Stratton. He was damn glad to meet you.” bit from the first film’s opening rush party scene.

But this also leads us to the first of the script’s big failing – the pervasive feeling of familiarity. The Deltas trip to the honkytonk roadside bar is an obvious callback to the famous bar scene in the first film. And having your film’s heroes’ fortunes rest on the outcome of a football game is a cliche that dates back as far as the Marx Brother’s Horse Feathers and Harold Lloyd’s 1925 comedy The Freshman. One of Hughes’ Delta House scripts also centered on a football game and I have to wonder if Simmons partly pinched the idea from here.

The next of the big problems with the script lies in its comedic set pieces. Many of the original film’s comic moments were drawn from the screenwriters own college experiences or stories they heard from friends. For all their outrageousness, there’s still the element of reality to the proceedings. (Well, with perhaps the exception of elements of the Homecoming Parade at the end of the film, but by this point, we’re along for the ride.) But here, the writers are just pushing things a little too far past the realm of probability for the sake of a laugh. In the scene where the Deltas cut some wires to a radio transmitter tower owned by the college, electricity suddenly sparks everywhere and then the whole tower just collapses. In another sequence, D-Day laces the punch at a Homecoming function and soon everyone is shedding their clothes to skinny dip in the river or to have sex with each other along the shore. These feel too broad and come across as cartoonish.

The worst transgression in this category is when Dean Wormer and the Neidermeyer brothers set fire to the Deltas’ frat house all the while Boon and Katie are having makeup sex in a room upstairs, oblivious to the conflagration around them. They even continue after they realize that the House is on fire! It stretches believability so badly that if he had a mustache, I’d be expecting Wormer to be twirling its end.

The script is also too scattered and unfocused. It often loses some its characters for long stretches of time, most specifically the new group of Deltas. Also, it doesn’t seem to know what story it wants to tell. Is the film about about the classic Deltas once again besting their rivals at the Omega House or is it about the Deltas inducting their new generation of frat brothers into the fine traditions of partying and chasing girls? At 127 pages, the script is far too long by trying to do both and ultimately each storyline just feels diluted.

There’s also a question about the underlying logic of the script that I couldn’t get out of my head. At the end of the first film, the Deltas sabotaged the Homecoming Parade in retaliation for Dean Wormer flunking them out of Faber and getting their fraternity charter revoked. And yet, just a couple of years later they’re allowed to stroll back on campus for the Homecoming weekend? I would imagine that Wormer’s first act upon seeing anyone of them set foot on the college grounds would have been to pick up the phone and call the police. Certainly the statute of limitations on their actions (destruction of property, inciting a riot, etc) couldn’t have expired yet.

If you’re looking for just a pleasant reunion with the characters you grew to like and hate in the original film, you should know that there are some conspicuous absences amongst the returning Deltas and Omegas. Belushi’s Bluto is the most obvious, but also the most understandable as the actor died just a few months before the draft date on this script. (This leads me to believe that perhaps the more prominent role of D-Day in the script is the result of giving his character much of the action that may have originally been planned for Bluto.) Stork’s absence is similarly understandable due to Kenny’s death. With Miller not participating in the writing, the character he played in the film, Hardbar, is nowhere to be found. On the Omega side, Doug Neidermeyer’s right hand man Greg Marmalade (played by James Daughton) is also missing, his role filled by Doug’s younger brother Brad.

But at the end of the day and this script’s 127 pages the question remains – Is this a necessary story to tell? We already know what the future holds for the Deltas and the Omegas after the Fall of 1962. Do we need to see more reasons why no one will mourn Niedermeyer when he eventually gets fragged by his own troops in ‘Nam? Do we need to see Boone and Katie having marital problems or Flounder on his way to becoming a counselor? Not really. And while we may remain friends with those we meet in college for the rest of our lives, I think that this script teaches us that perhaps it is not the wisest thing to only dwell on one’s past glories.

1. The Proposal (Touchstone, 3,056 Theaters, 108 Minutes, Rated PG-13): Look at that! Sandra Bullock! In a romantic comedy!

Well, to be fair, it’s been a while since she’s done one of those. Actually, it’s been a while since she has been on the big screen at all. Her last film was 2007′s Premonition.

In this one she plays a Canadian working as an executive in the U.S.  who is threatened with deportation. The solution to her dilemma lies with an underling played by Ryan Reynolds who agrees to marry her for a promotion. During a visit to his parents, presumably, real love starts to bloom.

Interesting enough, Reynolds is Canadian and Bullock is American. I though that reversal was interesting.

And kudos to whoever was in charge of casting. Here, you have a woman paired in a romantic comedy with a man over 10 years younger. Usually, it’s the opposite.

2. Year One (Sony/Columbia, 3,022 Theaters, 100 Minutes, Rated PG-13): You might, while looking at the trailers filled with many of the Apatow Repertory Players, and ask youself, is this a legit Apatow offering or yet another clone. Don’t worry, it is. Judd Apatow is a producer on the film and in my eyes that counts.

From the mind of Harold Ramis, the writer of such classics as Animal House, Stripes, Meatballs, Ghostbusters and many more, comes this comedy about the adventures of what appear to be two cavemen and their adventures through history.

I say, “what appears” because it seems Jack Black and Michael Cera go from the stone age all the way through biblical times. I’m not a theologian or an expert on intelligent design, but there seems like there would be a long gap of time between those two eras.

On the surface, I am uncertain about this film. It seems like one joke stretched way too long. But with Ramis and Apatow involved, I might be willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

1. Babylon A.D. (3,390 Theaters, 90 Minutes, Rated PG-13): Yes, the Labor Day weekend. The unofficial end to summer. The time when kids prepare to go to school. And when Hollywood dumps the last of their summer rejects on us before they bring out the Oscar and Holiday films.

This film seems to be one Fox kind of abandoned. I might have seen an ad on TV for it once, maybe? At least not as many times as the ads for the other two movies released today.

After reading this, it might be a case almost like when a man finds a woman attractive, invites her into his life, and then immediately begins changing everything about her to match up with his ideal. Then, when he’s done with the make over, he realizes that he’s not attracted to her anymore and sends her on her way.

As for the movie itself, it seems like a more dour version of The Fifth Element. Like we need that.

 2. Disaster Movie (2,642 Theaters, 90 Minutes, Rated PG-13): Okay, let’s go over this again. I’ll tell you the same thing I told you when Meet the Spartans came out. You didn’t listen to me then and that movie opened at number one. Hopefully, you’ll listen to me now.

Do not go and see this movie.

 Seriously. This film is made by the same guys who made Date Movie, the completely awful Epic Movie, and the aforementioned Spartans. So you are 100% guaranteed that this film will suck.

Give the price of your ticket to charity. Give it to a homeless guy. Just throw the money out your car window. Either way, the cash will be better spent.

Yes, I do like some of the actors in the movie. That’s not enough. Yes, there is a wrestling scene between Kim Kardasian and Carmen Electra. But it won’t be as good as you imagine and it will be too short to matter in the hour and a half of awful you’ll have to sit through (besides, you can find it online so you don’t have to see the movie at all).

Please do not see this film. I will lose all respect for you if you do.

 3. College (2,123 Theaters, 94 Minutes, Rated R): Wow. All three of the movies released today are around an hour and a half long. You can see all three in the same day and be home in time to cry yourself to sleep.

Yeah, I thought the TV ads for this film were pretty daring. No, not for the racy content. But for comparing itself to Animal House, Revenge of the Nerds, and American Pie, essentially stating that it was the college comedy of the 2000s. Wait a tic, wasn’t Old School released in 2003? Yes. Yes it was. And Accepted was released in 2006. You know what that makes you, College? At best, the Delta House, How I Got Into College and PCU of the 2000s.

The plot focuses on three High School seniors who visit the local college, supposedly on a fact finding trip, and become engrossed in sex, beer and rowdiness. I go to college and, darn it, it just isn’t like that. For me at least.
 

The Delta’s old nemesis, Douglas C. Neidermeyer, apparently wasn’t killed by his own troops in Vietnam as previously thought. He’s currently running a restaurant in Milwaukee and has been talking to his college rivals, members of the Delta House fraternity about their time at Faber College.

Or rather, actor Mark Metcalf, who played Neidermeyer in the classic college comedy Animal House, is running a resturant and has been conducting interviews with his fellow cast members for OnMilwaukee.com. So far he’s chatted with Martha “Babs” Smith, Stephen “Flounder” Furst and Karen “Katy” Allen.

They’re fun reads and worth a look.

Pre-Saturday Night Live, the predominate comic voice in America in the 1970s was the National Lampoon magazine. It should come as no surprise that several of those responsible for the Lampoons’s early success – Michael O’Donoghue, John Belushi, Chevy Chase – would be the ones who would chart SNL‘s early fortunes.