Class warfare: Iconic snobs vs. snobs comedy films

It’s the quintessential slobs vs. snobs comedy, and perhaps the defining comedy movie of the 1970s. It’s also not very good. Such is life! The raunchy anarchy of “Animal House” probably hit differently in 1978, when the anything-for-a-laugh ethos of National Lampoon was groundbreaking. Now, though, it’s just too shaggy, with no “there there,” as they say. Nevertheless, you can’t deny that the crew of Delta House are slovenly, craven anti-heroes of the highest order, and they unleash their brand of chaos on the crew from Omega House and, of course, Dean Wormer, to this day the foremost crusty dean archetype.

“Caddyshack” is the spiritual descendent of “Animal House,” and it still holds up as having some funny stuff in it. It helps that a few different comedic personalities are in the mix. You have Rodney Dangerfield basically just being “Rodney Dangerfield,” the smarmy, but funny, irony of Chevy Chase, Ted Knight as a delightful snobbish blowhard, and then the insanity of Bill Murray improvises his way into comedy lore as Carl Spackler. So the movie has that going for it, which is nice.

Another campus comedy, “Real Genius” is an interesting take on the slobs vs. snobs comedy, as the “slobs” are still geniuses. They just like to party and chill out, compared to Jerry Hathaway (a classic William Atherton as a smug jerk performance) and his acolytes, including Kent. Val Kilmer is great in a comedic role, and “Real Genius” is an entertaining take on slobs vs. snobs. An underrated gem of the ‘80s.

“Meatballs” is Murray’s first starring role in a movie, and honestly he feels grafted onto the script. One imagines Ivan Reitman saying, “Bill, do your thing and we’ll figure it out.” Unsurprisingly, the film comes to life when Murray is on screen. Otherwise, it kind of falls flat, but Murray has ensured “Meatballs” remains a top slobs vs. snobs comedy, and it spawned a few sequels.

If not for movies like “Meatballs,” we wouldn’t have gotten a cult classic like “Wet Hot American Summer.” This absurdist parody of camp comedies features quite the cast, including future stars like Amy Poehler and Bradley Cooper. While the “slobs vs. snobs” aspect of it is not at the forefront, it’s still there. Plus, if you watch the Netflix series based on the movie, you get more of that.

Rodney Dangerfield is back at it. While he plays a rich guy, as he did in “Caddyshack,” he’s still in the Dangerfield persona, and he and his son are also juxtaposed to a diver played by William Zabka. When Zabka is playing a guy named “Chas Osborne,” you know you’re in a slobs vs. snobs comedy.

The most successful of the “Saturday Night Live” movies, “Wayne’s World” sees Wayne and Garth getting their scrappy public access show get picked up by a real network. That puts them as creatives against the suits, and then you also have Benjamin, played with smarmy aplomb by Rob Lowe, attempting to make a move on Wayne’s girlfriend Cassandra as well. It’s not always thought of as a slobs vs. snobs comedy, but it is.

You want to talk about movies that don’t hold up, “Revenge of the Nerds” is right there for you. However, it is one of the memorable, significant slobs vs. snobs comedies of the 1980s, the defining decade of that genre. It also spawned a few sequels, so clearly it clicked at the time.

What if you did a campus comedy, but with adults? You get “Old School.” One of the films that helped boost the directing career of Todd Phillips, not to mention the movie career of Will Ferrell, “Old School” is about a few guys who decide to relive their frat days. Yeah, maybe not the most likable idea, but the cast helped make it work.

There are plenty of underdog sports movies, of course, but not all of them are slobs vs. snobs comedies. “The Mighty Ducks” is both of those. The Hawks aren’t just the dynasty of Twin Cities peewee hockey, they are also a team of “cake eaters.” Meanwhile, District 5, aka the Ducks, are scrappy and underfunded. They have to rise up under Gordon Bombay and take down the Hawks, Bombay’s childhood team.

Hey, you know ski schools, right? Totally a thing! The concept is definitely not a flimsy premise to have a slobs vs. snobs comedy set at a ski resort. Not only is there a ski school, but the school has multiple “sections,” with the partying section taking on the smarmy section. Why not?

Before it was an iconic sitcom, “MASH” was a film directed by Robert Altman. It’s a thorny film, as Altman’s approach is effectively nihilistic, watching the members of a mobile surgical hospital in the middle of the Korean War just trying to navigate through life. Two anarchic members of the hospital, Hawkeye and Trapper John, kill time between life-or-death field surgeries with pranks, mean-spirited and otherwise, against those who are more straight-laced.

“Van Wilder” is not a good movie, but it definitely made a cultural impact, and plenty of teenagers who like lazy, lowbrow comedy made it a success in the early 2000s. It also featured an early starring role for Ryan Reynolds, who would take the raunch of “Van Wilder” and, in time, interject it into the superhero genre with “Deadpool.”

Yeah, “Dirty Dancing” is focused on Johnny and Baby, and it isn’t aggressively a slobs vs. snobs film. However, it is sort of an “upstairs/downstairs” film, staff versus patrons, and there is a battle between them in a sense. It’s hard to have the time of your life when you are dealing with snobs, but sometimes it can happen.

As established by multiple Dangerfield roles, slobs vs. snobs comedies aren’t always about financial differences. After all, this is “Troop Beverly Hills” here! Shelley Long, trying to emerge as a movie star after leaving “Cheers,” plays a divorced housewife who becomes the den member of her daughter’s Wilderness Girls troop, but they are the outsiders who aren’t taken seriously by other troops. They are the scrappy underdogs, and the other groups are definitely snobbish toward them.

One more Murray movie in the mix. “Stripes” is a classic example of “Everybody has seen the first two acts, nobody has seen the third act” comedies. It starts to lose steam, but there is some good stuff before that. Murray and Harold Ramis join the U.S. Army and of course get into some hijinks with their ragtag crew. In fact, Murray’s John Winger has a speech that is effectively a slobs vs. snobs speech.

Basically every Marx Brothers comedy is about the brothers creating chaos and anarchy, but it’s not always in a slobs vs. snobs vein. “Monkey Business” is in that vein, though. After all, the four Marx Brothers (this was the Zeppo era) are unnamed stowaways on a boat, causing havoc and foiling the officers trying to arrest them every step of the way.

“Savage” Steve Holland and John Cusack followed up 1985’s “Better Off Dead” with “One Crazy Summer” one year later. It is indeed a story about Cusack on summer vacation on Nantucket, where he and a ragtag crew come together and deal with the nefarious Beckerstad family. Do they need to save one of the character’s grandfather’s house from greedy real estate developers? Of course they do!

Well, “underdog” is right in the name of the film. We have Vince Vaughn leading the slobs against Ben Stiller’s snobs at a fancy, strict gym. It comes down to a game of dodgeball, but at least that’s a fresh take on the underdog sports movie, not to mention the slobs vs. snobs comedy.

The Guardians of the Galaxy are definitely the ragtag crew in the MCU. That’s their whole thing. Now, they haven’t always been going up against snobs in their action-comedies. The second film, though, is definitely a slobs vs. snobs comedy. After all, the main villain is literally named Ego, but on top of that, we also get the Sovereigns, who are about the snobbiest alien race we’ve seen.