Statement of the Problem
Well as I see it, the problem is twofold. On the one hand, anyone coming out of an American-cinema education can tell you that the 1970s were a magical era where Hollywood somehow made it all work; where two seemingly incompatible elements that, were they together today, would forecast trouble to us present-day film-lovers, overcame an innate adversity and made movies so lastingly incredible they'll be remembered far longer than we will be. The elements I'm talking about are powerful, big-budget-minded studio execs, and solitary, film-school-educated directors.
   Like so many things these days, we have the 1960s to thank for this harmonious pairing. As civil unrest increased, so did studio absorption. In the latter half of the 1960s, most of the major studios left over from the collapse of the system in the 1950s were bought up by companies and retooled as "entertainment divisions" of those companies. The result, as the 1970s came, was fewer pictures made with higher financial stakes and demand for those pictures to break even, if not make money. Alongside this was the rise in the 1960s of collegiate film schools. Whereas previous generations of filmmakers where schooled, in and out of the classroom, in stage and television, the guys so loved in the 1970s (and I'm talking, naturally, here about the guys so loved still today: Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Robert Altman, George Lucas, et cetera) were schooled in film study and production. Their films of the decade—personal, original, with a nod to cinema's past—reflected this education.
   And so we have the 1970s' cinematic climate: large sums of money thrown at talented and educated filmmakers, who in turn made lasting and memorable films that made the studios large sums of money. It sounds impossible today mostly because it is. And, as such, movies today are not what they once were.
   But on the other hand, of course they're not. It's another era. These beloved filmmakers are not now nor were they ever without their faults. Though worthy of film-scholarly admiration for early nuanced and challenging work—say, Lucas's THX-1138 (1971), Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973), Coppola's The Godfather Parts I and II (1972, 1974)—these guys made their fair share of derivative one-trick ponies and easy mass-market attractions (what screenwriter William Goldman calls "comic book pictures"). Look at Coppola's The Conversation (1974), which is a straightforward remake of Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966). Or look at Star Wars (1977) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), which, though loved still today, seemingly do their damnedest to eschew personal interpretation; what you see is what you get and that's pretty much the end of the story.
   So, like, perhaps, with every decade, movies in the 1970s weren't all good, even the ones from the greats. And as those greats continue to make fair-at-best movies (seen the new Star Wars yet?) perhaps it's time that we stop being all nostalgic and look to our contemporary greats for lasting and memorable American films. But look around. Compare Oscar winners from recent years with those from the 1970s. You'll find that abandoning the greats of yesterdecade and loving the ones you're with, so to speak, isn't so easy a task.

Hypothesis
Are movies these days less entertaining, more poorly made, or generally worse than they were in the 1970s? My gut answer is no. But I tend to be both optimistic and present-centric in my love for things, mostly because the alternative—letting contemporary creative works elude you because you assume they're not as good as time-honored favorites—is too depressing to succumb to. Plus I've been very moved and entertained in the last three or four years by well-made movies I won't soon forget: to name a few, Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia (1999), Spike Jonze's Being John Malkovich (1999), Christopher Guest's Waiting for Guffman (1996), anything and everything Wes Anderson does.
   So no. Movies these days aren't worse than they used to be, they're just different. And, because more movies—which is to say, more bad movies—are made today than in the 1970s (blame the 1980s and the rise of video profits for this), the good ones are just harder to find.
   But, in the name of science, I'm not above conceding that, well, maybe movies these days aren't very good, and that changes in the industry and the social climate have ruined cinema forever. But how to measure something like this? How best, and most objectively, to figure this all out?

Experiment
Because all movies are different, comparing 1970s cinema to today's cinema isn't as easy a task of watching some movies from one decade and some movies from the other, and seeing which you liked better. But, when two different movies from two different eras are really sneakily the same, comparing 1970s cinema to today's cinema actually becomes kind of easy.
   Look at these two movies: In 1978, National Lampoon, a humor magazine, "made" (which is to say, produced, put up the money for, and probably supervised the initial creative construction of) Animal House, a nostalgic college picture about a fun, rowdy, sex-crazed fraternity full of lovable imbeciles: the titular Animal House. Then, in the 1980s, National Lampoon carried its Vacation series through a successful three-movie run, and filled the 1990s with a buddy-cop satire (Loaded Weapon I), a Corey-Corey romp (Last Resort), and finally another Vacation picture (Vegas Vacation). Then, in 2002, National Lampoon did something completely unexpected—it released Van Wilder, a college picture about a fun, rowdy, sex-crazed but lovable imbecile: the titular Van (short for Vance) Wilder.
   Has this been done before? In the history of American cinema, have the same people (or, at least, the same entity) made completely different movies in completely different eras with essentially the same approach, goal, and audience? Creative and narrative differences aside, Animal House and Van Wilder are to the business side of Hollywood the same movie, without one being an actual remake of the other. And because that business side has played the largest role in how and why American movies have changed over the last twenty-plus years, that essential sameness makes these movies adequate and sufficient (if not perfect) for movie-era comparison.
   So, the experiment, then, is quite simple:
   1) Go out and rent Animal House.
   2) Watch it.
   3) Return it—late as usual you lazy, irresponsible bastard.4) Go out and see Van Wilder at the supermegaplex in Homestead because it's the only place that still carries the movie this late after its unimpressive opening. Be sure to go to the 10:05 p.m. screening on a weeknight so that the only people in the theater with you are three boy-girl couples who spend their time between puzzling conversational topics wondering what the hell you're doing there alone.
   5) Leave the theater after the movie is done and walk through the parking lot in a light drizzle while trying to figure out how you're going to get at something so subjective yet so important in less than 2000 words.
   6) Settle, perhaps against your better judgement, for the short-and-sweet and always-objective scientific method.

Conclusion
Animal House and Van Wilder are, surprisingly, extremely similar movies, and Animal House is, not-so-surprisingly, extremely better. First, quick plot synopses.
   AH tells the story of Larry "Pinto" Kroger and Kent "Flounder" Dorfman, two college freshmen in the early 1960s eager to join fraternities at their new school. After being shunned by the campus's elite frat—seemingly for being of average looks and below-average social skills—the two turn to the Delta house, where Flounder is a legacy. What they find is a house full of fuck-it-all hooligans whose common solutions to all of life's problems involve toga parties, food fights, and grand-scale pranks. The college's dean finds all this unacceptable and schemes, with the Aryan head of the Interfraternal Council, to get the Delta guys kicked off campus, which leads to a fun climax where everyone—good guys and bad guys—gets what he deserves.
   VW tells the story of Van Wilder, a present-day, seventh-year student at Coolidge College whose rich father cuts him off financially after hearing of his inability to get a degree. Because of this, Van is "forced" to throw grand parties for other people (and sleep with elderly administrators) to pay his tuition. Soon, a young and ambitious reporter at CC's paper is given the assignment to get the scoop on Van Wilder. As she gets closer to Van, her boyfriend, the Aryan head of the Interfraternal Council, does everything he can to put Van down, eventually pulling off a stunt that gets Van expelled. After a series of soft-focus introspective shots, it all leads to a forcedly dramatic climax at a "loo-au" party where the right guys get the right girls as the camera cranes up and away to the forgettable strains of pop-rock music.
   The movies match up with a number of key elements:
   1) ass and titties
   2) (a) party animal(s) transforming squares into party animals
   3) blatant derision toward preppy fraternities
      3a) ridiculous hazing scenes intercut with protagonistic fun-party scenes
   4) danger of protagonist-expulsion due to poor academic performance
      4a) a courtroom scene that comes out of this danger
   5) a female interest who frowns upon a male character's rowdy way of life
      5a) eventually, a weird dual acceptance/elimination of that way of life
   6) Tim Matheson, who has a role in each movie
There are others, and while AH and VW have so many shared elements, what's important (and what, in the end, makes VW a far inferior movie) is the way each film handles those elements, and to what ends.
   At the heart of AH is a triumph over adversity through camaraderie. In making its protagonist a house and its myriad members, the movie gets at the very thing we all loved the most about college: the lasting friends we made there. Yeah, sure, the parties and the booze and the fucking around and the mischief are all fun. Good times. But all those things are made memorable by the people we did them with. AH knows this, and smartly makes its plot character-driven to let us in on the secret. After just 109 minutes of Eric "Otter" Stratton's confident schemes, Pinto's endearing neuroses, and John "Bluto" Blutarsky's dancing eyebrows, we love these guys with almost the same love we hold for our real-life friends. Creating in us the desire to make the unreal real—to live out the artifice we see on the screen—is cinema's greatest power. It's perhaps why we go to see movies.
   VW knows none of this. The movie is too concerned with hitting all the recent-comedic-gag bases to worry about fleshing out its characters. A (last one, promise) quick list of VW gags you may have seen before:
   1) an Indian with an exaggerated accent (The Simpsons, Office Space)
   2) the slipping of a laxative Mickey, and resultant loud and long dump-taking (Dumb and Dumber)
      2a) a laxative named "Colon Blow" (Saturday Night Live)
   3) sex with an old lady to work out financial trouble (Kingpin)
   4) envelope-pushing gross-out gags involving bodily fluids and the ingestion thereof; in VW's case: unsuspecting consumption of pastries made with dog semen (every teen comedy made these days)
   5) Teck (Real World Hawaii)
At the end of the movie, all we're left with is a bunch of disconnected ha-ha scenes—sketches, really. With characters that act predictably and go nowhere, the only way VW can hope to be memorable is to make these sketches as over-the-top as possible. No, I won't forget VW any time soon, but mostly because I can't get the image of a group of frat boys with dog semen dripping down their chins out of my head.
   But assuredly another comedy will come along where someone gargles with donkey piss or ices a cake with diarrheic cat feces and soon John Waters' notorious ending of Pink Flamingos won't be so notorious anymore. And though Pink Flamingos shows us that gross-out gags are nothing new, VW proves that they're now the comedic currency of Hollywood cinema. Goodbye, honest characters and wry social commentary. Hello, unending line of one shit joke after the other. This is what we get to take away from today's comedies.

So, at long last, a conclusion: hypothesis incorrect.
   For some reason or reasons (who can say? is it the bewildering math of today's cinematic business climate? dispassionate audiences raised on video? overcrowded film schools churning out formula-chasers?), Hollywood movies today aren't memorable, and don't try to be. They need only to be attractive, for once we're in the seats we've already bought our ticket. Why work hard to give us anything more than a couple hours' entertainment?
   And so the movies end and we file out of the theater left with a few lasting images and a tough-to-describe hole. We feel something missing. And we go back to our homes and turn on our television sets, pushing the channel buttons in the hopes we'll find it there.

back home.