Was anybodies college life like this? Mine sure as hell wasn’t, but then again mine was filled with more LAN parties and movie watching and other nerdy shit that doesn’t get you chicks in college. Whatever, to hell with that! My college angst aside, I guess the early nineties was a different time all together. A time when PCness (ha penis) is what ruled the roost and college life ended up being like this minefield of political trappings and trying to find your own identity. Actually it sounds a lot like high school except for raging keggers, unless that stuff happened in high school and I missed out on all that. Well, PCU is comes from a time when college movies were still trying to emulate the Animal House stylings and raunchy humor of their counterparts, but in reality this is actually a movie that does away with the raunch and goes for the over-exaggerated look at the college life that parents fear their children might be taking part of today. PARTY!
A high school senior comes to visit Port Chester (aka Politically Correct U) for the weekend, and the admissions department mistakenly sets him up to stay with Droz, a seven year student and party-animal who lives in The Pit, the most offensive house on campus. After trying to pawn the pre-freshman off on his house mate, Droz sets off on his normal daily activities including disrupting a political protest by throwing meat at a group of vegan protesters. The President of the University then receives a number of complaints, and with the help of her lackey, she may finally have the power to kick Droz’s house off campus. But the Pit throws an all-campus rager where George Clinton and the Parliament Funkadelic performs, and everything might turn out alright if the various political groups can forget their protests for one night and just have fun together. (source)
I am certain that you have caught this movie at some point in time during your youth. I mean this movie plays all the time on Comedy Central, so there is no excuse for not seeing this movie. PCU is a fairly solid comedy, although has a few short comings, but you got to enjoy such an absurd film that goes out of its way to take the standard college film tropes and make them a bit more ridiculous. You got the standard “save the rec center” plot where the group of frat rejects are going to get kicked out of their house and in true college fashion, a party is thrown to save the place. While familiar, it’s done in a great way to span across the entire campus and aims to offend and unite everyone under the common banner of fun.
PCU is all about lampooning the overt PC authority where everyone is unique and everything is all sunshine and rainbows. You can’t offend anyone any more, it’s all about the cramming this mentality of never offending down the throats of the young. Life isn’t really like that at all. Shit people who know me, know that I am not even remotely PC, but it all seems to work out. PCU takes this notion, shows it for what it is, ridiculous, and then interjects a comedic elements to get everyone to laugh about it. This movie has a solid young cast of actors such as David Spade, Jeremy Piven, and Jon Favreau, who are the only cast members to have a career after this movie. I mean what was the last movie that Jake Busey was in, other than Starship Troopers?
While not the greatest college comedy around, it certainly has a little special place in my heart, mainly because this movie is full of quotable lines and it introduced me to the “Caine-Hackman Theory”. With a lot of solid comedic actors, the DVD commentary informed that there wasn’t any improvisation, which is damn shame since Piven is pretty hilarious and can riff when given the chance. PCU is funny, ridiculous, lampooning and downright enjoyable for a movie that doesn’t really make you stretch your attention span and will give you some solid laughs.