Revenge of the Nerds

One of the campus comedies of the 1980s. Lewis and Gilbert start university. They cannot get rooms because the athletes' building has burned down and the athletes have thrown the new arrivals out. The excluded students come together to form their own fraternity; no governing body will accept them. The narrative proceeds through a college competition: the winning group will run the student council. So the outcasts and the athletes come up against each other. Its influence at the time was large and it made the "nerd" a fixed type in popular culture; three sequels followed. But the film reads very differently now. Several scenes in the second half, particularly the planting of hidden cameras and a character concealing his identity to sleep with a woman, are non-consensual and criminal. The film presents them as moments of triumph. Robert Carradine plays Lewis and Anthony Edwards plays Gilbert. A defining production in genre terms for anyone curious about 1980s campus comedy and the popular culture of the period. Before you watch, know this: parts of the film are not defensible by today's measure, and this is not an incidental matter of tone but part of the plot itself.