I have a particular enthusiasm - some might say mania - for the campus comedy. Why? I can't really say, but maybe there's something about the unbridled spirit of adventure and the unknown (after the prison like environment of high school yet before the prison like environment of adult/cube farm life?), the mystery, the romance, the rude pranks and high jinks of higher education. You can't beat it.

Therefore, I've been compiling in my mind for some number of months my list of Greatest of All Time. Oh, but my friends, it wasn't easy with so many to choose from.

The Top Five Campus Comedies of All Time

#5
Road Trip (2000)
Successfully combining two of my favorite movie conventions, the Campus Comedy and the Road Trip, this movie manages to balance a rollicking adventure, laugh-out-loud slapstick, and surprisingly strong characters into a hell of a strange trip. Of course, there are some groan-worthy moments (the skinny white dork who learns the ways of hip hop and love from the obese black momma comes particularly to mind) but that's somewhat inherent to almost all capital-c Comedies these days. In fact, I find it perfectly possible that the almost-perfect There's Something About Mary may have inadvertently set slapstick comedy back several decades, but that debate is for another day).

Tom Green and Seann William Scott, who both have the capacity to be great and awful, shine here in wacko side roles. Green is especially great as a zonked out tour guide for perspective freshman at Ithica College. He serves as the film's narrator, and is never funnier than when he swerves his narrative (and, therefore, the film) into horny-guy-T&A-territory. Scott, better known in most circles as Stifler from the American Pie franchise, makes his macho asshole shtick work as he tempers it with a modicum of humanity. However, it's Paulo Costanzo who steals the movie as a thoughtful stoner who's trying to Figure It All Out. These days, you can see him Thursdays on NBC as Herr Tribiani's nephew on Joey, the Friends spin-off.

The core story of the movie - dude travels from New York to Texas to try and prevent his girlfriend from watching a video of him making out with another girl — isn't really the point. It's the diversions (a car trying to make a General Lee-like jump across a broken bridge ends in disaster), the believable reactions (Dad's gonna kill me!), and punchlines (Dude, we are sooo gonna get ass-raped out here...) that make this road trip worth the ride.

#4
Animal House (1978)
The granddaddy of them all, Animal House is so famous now that almost every slapstick comedy involving youngsters since its release pays some level of homage to its signature themes: Scraping Together the Dough to Get the House Back, Will They Get Kicked Out of School?, the Parade/Event/Party Gone Horribly Awry, the Party to End All Parties, and, of course, Pranks, Pranks, and More Pranks (and High-Jinks).