College is often the most fun four years in a young person’s life. Sometimes it’s even more than four years. It’s that time in life that is between high school and living under your parents’ rules, and adulthood, when you have to live under society’s rules. It’s a brief interregnum when the rules are loosened and the party is on.
There are a lot of great college movies out there reflecting this. Classics like Animal House, The Waterboy, Back To School, and many others. This list is dedicated to all those wonderful movies that make us laugh and reminisce about our own time in college.
National Lampoon’s Animal House
National Lampoon’s Animal House is the peak of the genre. Set in the ’50s, but with a very 1970s sensibility, everything about the movie is pretty much perfect. The performances, especially from John Belushi, are uniformly brilliant. The writing is hilarious, and the story is actually pretty coherent, which isn’t always the case in movies like this. It also happens to be one of the most quotable movies ever.
Back To School
If you want to talk about quotable movies, few are as great as Back to School. Rodney Dangerfield was always at his best when he was just allowed to be himself and crack his one-liners like he did in his stand-up act. Thornton Melon is a perfect character for that, and a senior citizen returning to college is both a dream and a nightmare for almost everyone who loved college. We can’t all be great divers, though.
Real Genius
How much fun would it blow up a house using lasers and a huge vat of popcorn? That’s one of the things Real Genius set out to show, and wow, does it look fun! Val Kilmer is amazing in this nerdy, hilarious movie from the ’80s that hits all the high notes of being a partying nerd in college.
PCU
PCU is most remembered for being the movie that helped really launch the careers of Jeremy Piven and Jon Favreau. It’s a pretty funny mockery of college life in the ’90s, that while it’s pretty sophomoric and ridiculous, so is college in many ways. Frisbees, protests, obnoxious rich kids in loafers, and angry jocks all appear here, making it a nice, well-rounded satire
Everybody Wants Some!!
The “spiritual sequel” to the classic high school movie Dazed And Confused, Everybody Wants Some!! doesn’t quite reach the heights of Richard Linklater‘s classic ’90s movies about the 1970s, but it’s still a really funny movie. It’s one of many that highlight athletes in college and nails that life perfectly.
School Daze
It’s not surprising that a young Spike Lee looked to college for inspiration, having graduated from NYU not too many years before making School Daze. It’s only his second movie, and while it’s clear he hasn’t quite found his true voice yet (that would come a year later in Do The Right Thing), Lee is really gaining confidence as a director and the movie is wild. It’s far from perfect, but it’s really funny.
Old School
Old School answers the question, “What if you could go back to college just for the parties?” Everyone dreams, at least a little bit, about reliving those old glories at the frat house, chugging beer and streaking the quad. It’s one of Will Ferrell‘s best comedic performances, amongst many. It’s hard not to have some sympathy for Snoop Dogg though.
Van Wilder
Ryan Reynolds become a star after Van Wilder and he’s so good in it, it took him years to shake the typecasting. It’s Animal House for a new generations and while some people (usually from an older generation) simply can’t get into it, Van Wilder – and Reynolds – are both brilliant.
Revenge Of The Nerds
We can talk about how Revenge of the Nerds needs to be canceled for a number of reasons, like the racism and the assaults, but at the time, it was a stone-cold classic. You can’t excuse just how genuinely offensive it is by today’s more enlightened standards, you also can’t ignore how funny it was in its day.
Legally Blonde
Ok, so technically Legally Blonde is mostly about law school, not undergrad, but the movie starts with Reese Witherspoon as a vapid undergrad sorority girl who is spurred to action by a dopey boyfriend who dumps her. So it is a little about college. Besides, there aren’t a lot of movies about law school, either.
The Waterboy
College sports, especially football, and especially in the South, are a huge deal. There aren’t actually that many comedies about it, unless you count the unintentional comedy of The Program. The Waterboy isn’t Adam Sandler’s best movie, but everyone can admit that it has its moments, and any movie with Henry Winkler as a hapless football coach has to be good on some level.
Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle
Road trips are an important rite of passage in college and so it’s no surprise that there are a bunch of movies about them. Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle may have the most ridiculous reason for the road trip, as two guys get a little too high a decide they must have White Castle. It’s not about the destination, though; it’s the friends they meet along the way (like Neil Patrick Harris) that make the trip so memorable.
The Sure Thing
The Sure Thing is another road trip movie, this one with a pretty standard purpose: to meet a girl on spring break. John Cusack is as charming and as cool as ever in this one, and while almost none of it happens on a campus, neither are a lot of anyone’s best memories of their college years.
Pitch Perfect
In the 2000s, glee clubs and singing groups became all the rage in high school and college. So it makes sense that a movie like Pitch Perfect would become one of the most beloved comedies of the decade. It features a stacked cast including Elizabeth Banks, Rebel Wilson, Anna Kendrick, and more, and it’s just as funny as any of the classics from previous decades.
Road Trip
Tom Green is amazing in Road Trip as one of the “kids” who has been in college for waaaaaay too long. He basically plays the unreliable narrator, telling prospective students just how crazy college can get when he tells them about a road trip some older students experienced. It’s raunchy and ridiculous, and gut-bustlingly funny.
Dear White People
Dear White People is as serious as it is funny, making it both a proper critique of “white” colleges and a biting satire of them. There aren’t a lot of comedies telling the stories of African-Americans in college, and this critically acclaimed movie should have inspired more, because it’s so good.
The Freshman
1990’s The Freshman is not really remembered for being a college movie, but it is. Remember, Matthew Broderick’s character is trying to survive in a very expensive city (New York) at a very expensive university (NYU). Of course, it’s best remembered for Marlon Brando satirizing his Godfather character, but at it’s heart, it’s still a college movie.
Oxford Blues
There is nothing more “’80s” than a movie about a guy who scams his way into one of the most prestigious universities in the world just to meet a girl. Rob Lowe stars as a guy who does just that in Oxford Blues. He meets the girl, chugs some beer, and becomes an elite rower in this classic from 1984.
The Rules of Attraction
Any movie based on a Bret Easton Ellis novel is going to be pretty funny and very dark. The Rules of Attraction is both to the nth degree. It’s not as popular as some of the other movies based on Ellis novels, like Less Than Zero and American Psycho, but it has all the satire that the author is known for is and it’s a much funnier movie than most remember it being.
Drumline
2002’s coming-of-age comedy Drumline was only a minor hit at the time, but it’s easy to see why so many members of the cast, including star Nick Cannon, Zoe Saldana, and Orlando Jones, became stars later. It’s a rare movie in the genre that takes place on an HBCU, and if you’ve never seen it, you need to see it soon!
Happy Death Day
Comedic horror movies rarely work for me, but Happy Death Day defies that. It’s genuinely funny, and pretty darn scary too! Sure, it’s dark, but that a feature and while it didn’t have to be in college, it does benefit from the setting.
Necessary Roughness
Necessary Roughness is a completely ridiculous movie, and it’s far from the best on this list, but it is a movie that is very much of its time. It’s funny, though not as funny as some of the classics. It does feature a great cast, and it definitely has its moments, but any movie about big-time college football could have been so much funnier.
Life Of The Party
Comedies about adults going back to college aren’t unique. What makes Life of the Party unique is one person: Melissa McCarthy. She is a one-woman tour de force in this one and brings all of what makes her so funny to the role. It’s over the top and insane, just how you want a movie from this genre to be.
Neighbors
Neighbors is unique on this list because it’s not from the perspective of the college kids, but from the hapless neighbors who have to deal with a bunch of idiots. It sounds like a nightmare for any adult, because it is, but it’s also a riot.
Horse Feathers
Movies making light of college life go back way further than you may realize. All the way back to the Marx Brothers and their classic, Horsefeathers in 1932. It’s kind of amazing how similar the themes are surrounding that most American piece of campus life, the college football game.
Accepted
Admittedly, Accepted is about going to a fake college, but there are plenty of people who would call their school a fake one on some level, too, right? The 2006 movie highlights the pressures so many feel to get into college, and for that alone, it belongs on this list.
American Pie 2
There isn’t a ton to write about here. American Pie 2 is a fairly straightforward sequel to the high school classic. It’s not as funny as the original, but it has its moments, for sure. The characters are all pretty one-dimensional, but so are most college kids, if we’re being honest.
Adventureland
Ok, Ok, this one is a bit of a stretch, but first jobs out of college are as much a rite of passage as college itself. That’s especially true of a job whose only purpose is to save money for the trip of a lifetime. Your first “adult” love falls into those rites as well, as this movie highlights.
Wonder Boys
There are, of course, movies that really focus on the “other side” of college life, that of the professors. Wonder Boys is one of the best, in that regard. Michael Douglas stars in this film, based on the Michael Chabon book of the same name. It may not have been a hit, but as the 81% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes proves, it’s worth checking out.
Admission
Another movie on the list from the professor’s point of view – or at least the administration’s point of view – is the Tina Fey-led Admission. It’s about exactly what you expect. Fey stars as an admissions officer at Princeton who falls in love with a high school college counselor played by Paul Rudd. It’s a pretty textbook rom-com that is cute and funny, and the charming cast makes it worthwhile.