Boys Will Be Boys

Traditionally, outdoor screenings feature kid-friendly movies, the type families can watch together on a jumbo-sized picnic blanket. Animal House, which begins at 9 tonight at City Market Park (Third Street and Main), is not such a film. Its characters discuss sex constantly, in language that's alternately euphemistic and crudely graphic. Its heroes, the man-children of the Delta House fraternity, lack the awkward charm of the boys gone wild at the center of modern comedies such as Superbad and Old School. These cocky pranksters display a certain morally casual attitude. But for people who'd love to see a rampaging brute like John Belushi's "Bluto" Blutarsky smash the acoustic guitar making all that precious Juno mood music, 1978's Animal House provides a jolting glimpse of an era when laughs usually came in conjunction with shock. Like the brews at the Deltas' toga party, this screening don't cost nothin'. For more information, call 816-842-1271.
Fri., July 25, 9 p.m., 2008