Frat House . Austin Chronicle . 03-23-98

Frat House

DIRECTED BY: Andrew Gurland

REVIEWED: 03-23-98

In filmmaking it's not just that truth is stranger than fiction, it's often the case that it's simply better at getting people to believe what should be believable. Todd Phillips and Andrew Gurland's documentary Frat House is that type of truth. If the sexist, foul-mouthed, narrow-minded head of the Beta Chi fraternity, the main focus of the first portion of the film, weren't an actual person, it would be dismissed as a construct. If the degrading, ritualistic hazing weren't captured with such hardcore reality, it would look a grotesque farce. But Phillips and Gurland not only pull off an unflinching and good, long look into the physical entrance exam for frat-dom, they do it with a perfect sense of style, as the documentary is often as funny as it is frightening. By getting inside the hazing itself (when their original storyline was abruptly derailed, the two filmmakers had to participate in the pledge to continue), they get the psychological undertones of both sides of the fence. And it only takes a few shots of "Hell Night" for the most incredible of symbiotic relationships to emerge: one in which the pledges need to endure the humiliation to become brothers, and the brothers need to haze in order to validate their previous and similar experience. Throughout the process, there is this sick battle between individual identity and the need to belong. If there is a failing in Frat House it is that the subject is inherently set up to be vilified, but the triumph is the response (in the form of a question): "Yeah, but don't they deserve it?"

In front of Frat House is the short "Fender Philosophers," in itself a humorously noteworthy piece in which director Lisa Leeman scratches the chrome surface to find populist activism in a most succinct and often clever form.

--Michael Bertin

Full Length Reviews
Frat House

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