A year following this frolicking party film, Tim Matheson would ask Chevy Chase to kill him in FLETCH. Chase was supposed to play the role of OTTER in ANIMAL HOUSE (before John Landis objected, not wanting his film to be a SNL skit), a role that made Matheson, a former child actor who was growing into various filler roles (like MAGNUM FORCE), famous. In FLETCH, Matheson is in his forties, a dapper businessman. Here he's a college student, and actually looks much younger than in FLETCH but way too old to be a student. He's one of four slackers stuck in a purgatory college sent on a river rafting race, a win garnering them not only free degrees but a chance to defeat the bad guys: a quartet of perfect looking blonde dudes.
Here we have a wacky adventure that spends the first half partying on land and the second half partying downstream. It's splendidly vapid entertainment from start to finish, providing terrific action shots along the roaring rapids. Stephen Furst, another ANIMAL HOUSE alumni, flounders as a fat guy who likes to eat. Dan Monahan ("Pee Wee" of PORKY'S fame) is included but adds little more than a smiling face to the mindless goings-ons throughout. And Jennifer Runyan is fitfully pouty and pretty as Matheson's conquest.
Here we have a wacky adventure that spends the first half partying on land and the second half partying downstream. It's splendidly vapid entertainment from start to finish, providing terrific action shots along the roaring rapids. Stephen Furst, another ANIMAL HOUSE alumni, flounders as a fat guy who likes to eat. Dan Monahan ("Pee Wee" of PORKY'S fame) is included but adds little more than a smiling face to the mindless goings-ons throughout. And Jennifer Runyan is fitfully pouty and pretty as Matheson's conquest.