Do you need something to do on a rainy day? Are you worried that you will forget what it’s like to be a student? Or do you already miss school so much that you could use a little mental road trip back to campus?
Get the popcorn ready, find the perfect spot on the couch, turn off your phone and join me on a tour through five decades of college themed movies. We have old classics and new goodies – hopefully there’s something that strikes everyone’s fancy!
PCU (1994)
Tom, a high school senior visits a university to experience “campus life.” He is going to spend a couple of days at PCU, a university where fraternities are outlawed and political correctness is more important than anything else: PCU “officially” stands for Port Chester University but you guessed it right, it might as well be Political Correctness University.
The movie paints a fantastic and (just slightly) over-exaggerated picture of the 1990s. A decade that was all about flannel, hair* and political correctness. Everyone was part of a movement, freshmen became freshpersons and giving “Bisexual Asian Studies” its own building was probably not all that far-fetched. In the end, Tom’s weekend at PCU involves a lot of running across campus in total fear but of course also a lot of reasons and friends to come back to in fall.
The plot is very similar to Animal House – crazy but lovable underdogs vs. the preppy kids and the university system itself. They have a tight deadline to change things around, cause mayhem and fight the big guys with charm and luck.
Like every good college movie there is also a lot of (more or less) useful advice such as “Do not take any classes before 11am. Beer is your best friend so drink a lot of it, and make friends with the guy who has a car.” However, there is one even more memorable sentence that sums it up very well and is still valid today, almost 20 years after the movie was made: “That’s the beauty of college these days. You can major in GameBoy if you know how to bullshit.” Or write a thesis about the Caine-Hackman theory – which would probably be the Aniston-Hanks theory nowadays. Just in case you need inspiration for the next semester.
*I bet Jeremy Piven and Jon Favreau are reminiscing about those good old hair days quite a bit.
Next week we’ll leave campus for a true classic about life after college. (And all the things they don’t teach you in class.)
Isabelle Mitchell is from Switzerland (not Sweden). She loves coffee and chocolate and she can talk about movies and the weather for a very long time. Isabelle went to Film School in Denmark and Canada and is a Sound Designer, but she’s currently working on getting her BS in Advertising at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh (Online Division). She’s planning on slowly taking over the advertising world one tagline at a time. When she’s not doing homework or studying, she works as a Marketing Assistant. You can find her on Twitter @isabellesagt or if you have a longer attention span, her blog.