Meatballs

The film is generous and often gentle. With Bill Murray, very likable as a head counselor who gruffly plays Wallace Beery to an updated, angst-ridden Jackie Cooper (Chris Makepeace). Read full review

This film has almost none of the scraggy, raunchy, irreverent anarchy that gave "Animal House" a kind of perverse anti-style. There's nothing at all perverse about Meatballs; in fact, it's so cutesy, squeaky-clean that it becomes Andy Hardy with a few extra belches. [9 July 1979, p.68]

For most of the movie, Murray desperately throws in schtick after schtick to try to keep the film afloat (Meatballs doesn't deserve him, and he certainly doesn't deserve it), but when facing Makepeace, who isn't allowed to do anything but trade a petulant pout for a wait-'til-the-sun-shines-Nellie smile, he caves in under the sentimental good cheer and becomes a nice guy, a role he is not especially suited to play. [2 July 1979]

With far fewer high spirits than “Animal House,” and only two characters of any interest, Meatballs reveals itself to be a loud, offkey cry for conformism of a most disappointing sort. It's a sheep in wolf's clothing. Read full review

The movie is a series of shopworn jokes, executed with no discernible flair. The writers have done little more than round up the usual array of stereotyped characters: a horny fat boy, a bespectacled nerd, a conceited stud, busty girls and so on. Read full review