Vince Vaughn, a vastly underrated comic actor (see: Swingers, Made) is perfect as the wisecracking power-behind-the-throne. He makes Wilson a King on Campus, replete with parties featuring Snoop Dogg and fraternity disciples to worship him wherever he goes (including his office job). What's especially intriguing is that it's left up in the air whether he is interested in his friend's wellbeing or if everything he does is part of an overall marketing plan for his electronics store empire.

Will Ferrell single-handedly created a new stereotype for the drunken man-boy with his portrayal of Frank the Tank. While this is by far Ferrell's best film (note to film makers: the more you ground Ferrell in reality, the funnier he becomes), it's movie magic when he's on screen with Vaughn and Wilson. The three have a great chemistry, and I hope we see more of them together in the future.

There are a number of strong performances in smaller roles, including the aforementioned Lewis and Cuthbert, as well as the great Jeremy Piven (more on him in a minute) as the uptight Dean, Craig Kilborn as the rival cheatin' boyfriend, and a bunch of wackos that make up the rest of the outcast fraternity.

Finally, Old School contains perhaps the funniest scene in the history of Campus Comedy: a raging, maniac van hunting down unwitting pledges to the screaming sounds of Metallica is, as the commercial says, priceless.

#2
Revenge of the Nerds (1984)
In its own special way, this movie helps to represent the best of 80s comedy: a group of outsiders and misfits buck the system by doing things their own way. It appeals to anyone who was never part of the Cool Crowd growing up, and who reserved, in deep recesses of the psyche, dreams of revenge, triumph, redemption.

Robert Caradine and Anthony Edwards (who parlayed his nerd-dom into later ER success) are great as nerd buddies who head off to college together, believing their days of being ridiculed for wearing pocket protectors and digging computers and robots were behind them. Of course, they couldn't be more wrong, and that's where the fun begins.

Very soon, the lines of battle are drawn between Nerds and Jocks. The Nerd Squad, which includes such personages as the legendary Curtis Armstrong (also excellent in Better Off Dead, which might be the best comedy to come out of the 80s) as Booger and Timothy Busfield (who went on to much more serious success on Thirtysomething and The West Wing) as Poindexter. There are also a few other stock characters, such as the Black Gay Guy and the Little Kid.

The film is structured very well: the jocks continually pile humiliations upon the nerds, who are forced to organize and, eventually, get what's theirs and give what's coming to 'em. You actually end up caring when, during the movie's pivotal moment, Bernie Casey (who seems to show up in all of the best comedies of the era) shows up with the bad ass (and black) Lamda Lamda Lamda dudes to bolster the nerd's faltering efforts. It's also great to see Caradine win over the Chief Jock's girlfriend by disguising himself in his carnival costume (Darth Vader) and showing her that "all jocks think about is sports... all nerds think about is sex."