The king of ‘slobs versus snobs’
Reitman grew alongside his audience, and was great at fooling us into thinking comedy was easy
Ivan Reitman was a filmmaker who almost exclusively made light comedies and, as he sometimes pointed out himself, that type of film doesn’t usually get a lot of respect. But when the Canadian producerdirector died suddenly on Monday at the age of 75, it was clear that, among his colleagues, he had the respect that critics sometimes denied him.
Dan Aykroyd, his “Ghostbusters” star and fellow alumnus of Citytv in Toronto, called him “one of the last great creative talents of the big screen era.” Todd Phillips, a comedy director (“The Hangover”) who graduated to Oscar-nominated dramas like “Joker,” praised Reitman for his mentorship and for producing his first two films. Jon Hurwitz, creator of the series “Cobra Kai,” listed Reitman’s films and called them “a legacy of classics.”
Reitman broke into Hollywood as producer of the 1978 smash hit “National Lampoon’s Animal House.” His earlier work in Canada had included horror films; most famously he produced David Cronenberg’s “Shivers.” He also worked as a theatre producer, scoring a big hit with the Broadway musical “The Magic Show,” in which the lead, magician Doug Henning, couldn’t sing, dance or act (the other characters carried that while he did his magic tricks).
But it was “Animal House” that defined Reitman’s career from then on — not to mention redefining film comedy.
With its story of an underdog college fraternity fighting an evil dean and an even more evil upper-class frat house, “Animal House” might be one of the most imitated comedies ever made.
Reitman himself directed two of the most successful imitators.
“Meatballs,” the highest-grossing Canadian-made film ever, starred Bill Murray as a counsellor at an underdog summer camp fighting an evil upper-class camp. It was followed by “Stripes,” starring Murray and “Animal House” writer Harold Ramis as a couple of slackers who join the U.S. army, break all the rules and get rewarded for it.
These comedies are usually summed up with the phrase “slobs versus snobs,” where our main characters are hardly heroic, but we root for them because they’re in revolt against ossified institutions like the university system and the military. Reitman was still in his 30s and he filled the movies with other young comedic talents from “Saturday Night Live” and “SCTV,” like Murray, Ramis and John Candy (who became internationally famous for his role in “Stripes”).
These films, with their anti-authority attitude and seemingly improvisatory style, brought in huge numbers of young male viewers, a demographic that hadn’t been easy to lure into movie theatres.
When you start a trend, though, you can easily start to flounder once the trend is over. That’s why “Ghostbusters” was not only Reitman’s most popular film as a director, but his cleverest choice as a producer. Murray, Ramis and Aykroyd played characters who were recognizably similar to the frat boys of “Animal House” but with a twist: they’re all university professors who get fired from their jobs after they become convinced that ghosts are real. Instead of changing the system from within, they start their own business, aiming to use their scientific know-how to exterminate paranormal creatures.
Reitman’s next reinvention was in an unlikely collaboration with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who was looking to reach beyond his actionmovie audience.
In “Twins” (1988), Schwarzenegger must get to know his long-lost fraternal twin brother, played by Danny DeVito.
“Kindergarten Cop,” as the title implies, made him a cop who goes undercover as a kindergarten teacher and the experience helps him recover from a failed marriage.
These movies, again, seemed to age along with the viewers who had made Reitman rich. The countercultural elements were gone and so were the attempts at hipness. Reitman was making films about career men discovering there was something missing from their lives, like raising children or connecting with the relatives you haven’t seen in a while. The guys who went to see “Animal House” now were, or wanted to be, family men and Reitman still knew how to reach them.
No artist can stay current forever, though. Although Reitman had another hit with the 1993 political comedy “Dave,” his subsequent films suggested that he was less certain of how to keep up with the times. The gimmick comedy “Junior” (1994) pinned all its laughs on the idea of Schwarzenegger getting pregnant. “Fathers’ Day,” with Billy Crystal and Robin Williams as two men who both think they’re the father of a teenage boy, flopped.
Still, Reitman never stopped making hits. He moved past the image of a director of “guy” movies with “No Strings Attached,” a 2011 romantic comedy with Natalie Portman and Ashton Kutcher, which became a hit on the strength of female viewers. And he produced and creatively controlled “Space Jam” (1996), the Michael Jordan/Bugs Bunny crossover movie.
How do you turn a movie based on a commercial, starring a non-actor and a Looney Tunes cartoon character, into a box-office hit and a home-video staple?
Well, how do you make movie stars of improv comics or turn the Terminator into a comedy star? A light mainstream comedy is harder to create than it looks. Few filmmakers were as good as Reitman at fooling us into thinking it was easy.
The guys who went to see “Animal House” now were, or wanted to be, family men and Reitman still knew how to reach them