Revenge of the Nerds - Cheap Thoughts

You have some movies that are pretty dated, then there's Revenge of the Nerds which is...just uncomfortable. The 1984 cult comedy follows the story of a fraternity of nerds in their first year of college as they are picked on and abused by the jock fraternity and seek revenge. The movie plays out like your typical hi-jinx high school/college teen comedy, except there's a lot about this movie that doesn't work...let's start with the smaller problems. Firstly, the plot is just unbelievable even by teen comedy standards. As an actual university student I was watching this entire movie thinking "in what world would that work?" and almost every problem in the film could be solved by just...going to the police. I mean the movie is obviously exaggerating the roles that these people play, jocks were never that dumb and wouldn't have gotten away with that much in real life, also people are way meaner to the nerds than any self-respecting adult would be, so some suspension of disbelief has to be had but even still, it exists in the real world so i don't get why they couldn't just go to the police for any number of these problems.

Then there's the fact of just how dated this movie is, and I don't even mean by today's standards, but literally less than a decade later people would look back at how stupid this is. While nerds were still uncool in the 90's, there reputation wouldn't be this bad and no one would treat them this horribly, especially in college, seriously, this is friggin' college! These people are literal adults and everyone treats them like crap! Throughout the movie all i could think of was that one episode of The Simpsons where Homer goes to college and yells out NEEEEEEEEEEEERD and even the Jock is befuddled by his behaviour. But going to today's perspective, it is even more dated due to the popularity of nerd culture as well as the respect for the intelligence of individuals, and with every passing year the movie is going to be less and less relevant. Also i don't get the ending, the nerds have a big performance at a charity event and it just looks like random nonsense yet everyone really likes it. Also why is the stoner and the gay guy in the nerd fraternity? I mean yeah they're losers by societies hierarchy of the 1980's, but they're not nerds.

Then there is the biggest problem with this movie and the reason why it's so uncomfortable to watch, almost every character in this movie is a sex offender and commit multiple acts of sexual offence. I don't mean they can be interpreted as sexual crimes, but literal crimes. Putting cameras in girls bedrooms to watch them change, that's a sexual offence, breaking into their bedrooms and stealing their underwear, that's a sexual offence, selling nude pictures of them without their knowledge, that's a sexual offence, sleeping with someone under false pretences, that is literally rape. This movie has us supporting a bunch of rapists, committing acts that were illegal then and illegal now.

This movie is awkward, it is one of the most uncomfortable, creepy and unrealistic depictions of college that I have ever seen, it's funny, i'll give it that, but what it passes off for hi-jinx is actually rape and i can't forgive a film for that. I'm giving Revenge of the Nerds a 3/10.

-Danny