PCU
D: Hart Bochner (1994); with Jeremy Piven, Chris Young, David Spade, Megan Ward, Sarah Trigger, Jon Favreau, Jessica Walter.
“The Animal House of the Nineties” is actually a pretty accurate description of Hart Bochner’s PCU, a comedy set in the throes of our past decade’s political correctness craze. The comparison is pretty hard to miss, considering the college setting, which allows writers Adam Leff and Zak Penn (teaming up for a second time after the abominable Last Action Hero) a countless number of obvious jokes. Dumb, beer-guzzling jocks, racist, blazer-wearing frat boys, and militant feminists are repeatedly mocked throughout the film. The story begins when pre-frosh Tom Lawrence (Young) arrives for a weekend tour of the Port Chester University campus. His tour guide is James “Droz” Andrews (Piven, who steals every scene he is in), an undergrad senior on the seven-year plan, majoring in spending the rest of his life in college. Droz lives in “the Pit,” a frat-house-turned-dormitory, known as one of the few places on campus the political correctness bug has yet to infect. But the residents have run into opposition; university President Garcia-Thompson (Walter) is trying to kick them out due to a $7,000 damage bill. She is teamed up (in more ways than one) with Rand McPherson (Spade), who is desperately trying to get his aptly named fraternity “Balls ‘n Shaft” reinstated into the house. “The Pit” residents’ solution? Throw an all-school rave with tons of alcohol and a band and charge at the door. Hilarity, of course, ensues. The story is a pretty formulaic comedy, keeping the audience laughing for most of the film, throwing in flecks of plot during a few awkward serious scenes, and then tying everything up in the last 10 minutes. Yet there are a number of well-respected actors who make their stereotypical characters truly hilarious. A huskier Favreau (in one of his pre-Swingers roles) plays Gutter, the dumb music major who ultimately saves the day, and Jake Busey has a few shining moments on screen as Mersh, the classic perma-fried, tie-dyed stoner. George Clinton and the Parliament-Funkadelic even make a cameo appearance in a drawn-out concert scene, stretching the short-but-sweet comedy to a mere 80 minutes. Bochner keeps his actors over the top, which for this film is perfect, and the writing is solid, with lines (“I haven’t seen one of those since my third sophomore year”) that will be repeated at dorm-room parties for years to come. Being immortalized among college kids may have been just the thing PCU wanted in the first place.
This article appears in March 30 • 2001.