The not-cool collegians are back on the screen for further revenge
| New York
They dress funny, they laugh funny, and they always wear plastic pencil holders in their shirt pockets. They're nerds, and they're back at theaters everywhere, still looking for sweet revenge against the cool guys. Since the original ``Revenge of the Nerds'' is not the kind of movie that remains etched in memory, I'll remind you that our heroes are members of the Lambda Lambda Lambda fraternity at Adams College.
They have high IQs, but their savoir-faire quotient is on the negative end of the scale. This infuriates the ultra-``hip'' members of Alpha Beta, another fraternity, which doesn't like sharing the same planet - much less the same campus - with such a collection of nebbishes and all-around losers.
In ``Revenge of the Nerds II: Nerds in Paradise,'' both groups attend a fraternity convention in their idea of heaven, which turns out to be Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
The nerds just want to be liked, but the Alpha Betas won't rest until they've driven every last one clear out of the state. They threaten them, cheat them, frame them for grand larceny, and even try the lowest trick of all - parlimentary maneuvers on the convention floor. But the nerds prevail, of course, and one of them even gets a girlfriend with a high IQ of her own.
The first ``Revenge of the Nerds'' was a pretty stupid movie. But it was partly redeemed by its genuine affection for the nerds themselves - it made us like them a lot, and you couldn't help feeling good when they came out on top.
``Nerds in Paradise'' is also a stupid movie, with more than its share of cheap vulgarity, and it doesn't do so well at making the heroes really lovable.
But more important: If these guys are so smart, why do they win their final victory with nothing more subtle than a punch in the mouth, backed up by a military tank?
The answer, I suppose, is that we live in the age of Rambo, and even nerds are jumping on the movie-violence bandwagon. What's next? ``Revenge of the Nerds III: The Nerd Platoon''? Or is it ``RoboNerd''?
