Back to school 101: Watch these flicks

Let’s face it: It’s August, and the summer is slipping inevitably into fall. For a lot of us, this means heading back to school for another year of toil in the salt mines of the intellect. It’s vitally important that you be mentally prepared for what awaits you in those hallowed, ivy-covered halls. Oh, sure, you could do something practical like brushing up on your term-paper skills, but we’ll leave the practical recommendations to others — our job is to fill your head not with Socratic philosophy, but quality light entertainment, and to that end, here are a few of our favorite movies set at (or near, anyway) college and high school. Yes, they will be on the final exam.

‘Animal House’ (1978)
There is an ancient legend, or a curse, or something like that, that says that anyone who writes an article about school-related movies has to start off with “Animal House,” lest the enraged Gods of Film cast lightning at your house and short out your DVD player. John Landis’ ensemble comedy is still the quintessential college romp, led by John Belushi’s unforgettable performance as drunken, out-of-control maniac Bluto Blutarsky, the wildest member of Faber College’s wildest fraternity, prone to starting food fights in the cafeteria, kidnapping the horse of the campus’ mean ROTC instructor, and expressing his opinion of folk music by smashing the guitar against a wall and then mumbling a contrite “sorry.” If the movie sometimes goes past the bounds of good taste, that’s probably the price it pays for its spirit of rebellion at all costs — or, as one of the characters puts it: “This situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody's part.” Welcome to college, my friends.

‘The Freshman’ (1990)
First-year film student Clark Kellogg (Matthew Broderick) is struggling to find his way in New York and deal with an arrogant, demanding professor — difficult enough for any young man, but he gets both unexpected help and mind-boggling new complications when, by chance, he’s befriended by a powerful mobster named Carmine Sabatini. At least, that’s the name the film gives him, but movie buffs know who Sabatini really is, since actor Marlon Brando gets great comic mileage by capitalizing on his association with the most well-known capo in filmdom: Vito Corleone, the Godfather himself. Corle — I mean, Sabatini goes out of his way to “help” his new favorite, much to Kellogg’s horrified anxiety, by sending Kellogg’s prof a silkily threatening “opinion” that Clark is an A student, and by hiring him for a strange pickup job involving an endangered lizard. Brando and Broderick are both very funny, with a relationship that’s a clear forerunner to the milquetoast-vs.-mobster dynamic of “Analyze This.”

‘Fast Times At Ridgemont High’ (1982)

Universal Pictures / ZUMA Press via Newscom file Sean Penn and Ray Walston star as Jeff Spicoli and Mr. Hand in the comedy "Fast Times at Ridgemont High"

Cameron Crowe, who later directed movies like “Almost Famous,” “Vanilla Sky” and the forthcoming “Elizabethtown,” made his first big splash into movies as the screenwriter of “Fast Times At Ridgemont High,” which he researched in the most direct way possible: pretending to be a teenage transfer student, he enrolled in a high school, the better to observe real-life students. In director Amy Heckerling’s hands, the laughs are much more prominent than Crowe’s sociology and drama. Future brooding Oscar winner Sean Penn has an unforgettable turn as stoned-out surfer dude Jeff Spicoli, whose slacker attitude eventually puts him at loggerheads with hardnosed history teacher Mr. Hand (Ray Walston, best known previously as the title character in the 1960s sitcom “My Favorite Martian”).

‘Rushmore’ (1998)
Indie-film darling Wes Anderson teamed up with his friend Owen Wilson on the script for this wonderfully quirky, smart comedy. Jason Schwartzman stars as Max Fischer, a hyperkinetically driven 15-year-old named who cares less about failing his classes at prestigious prep school Rushmore Academy than a series of wildly ambitious extracurricular projects, including some hilariously over-the-top stage plays (his high-school “Serpico” is a masterpiece). Along the way he befriends a lonely industrialist — played by Bill Murray, in the role that relaunched his career into movies like “Lost In Translation” and the new “Broken Flowers” — and both of them fall tragically in love with Rushmore’s new elementary teacher.

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