To address the problems of too specialized content and single teaching methods in general education courses of science and engineering in colleges and universities, this study tries to reform such general courses under the guidance of the "student-centered" concept. A general chemical education course, "Chemical Mysteries in Movie and Animation", is used as an example. The aim of this course is to train students' independent thinking, analysis, and discrimination ability and give guidance for students' health and safety. The reformed course material includes course content, teaching and learning methods, and a course assessment. The course content is selected based on the students' chemical foundations and their demands for knowledge of health and safety, which is composed of nine themes that are closely related to health, safety, energy, and the environment. Situational teaching is employed as the main teaching method, in which a large amount of clips from movies and animation containing the chemical scenes of the nine themes are screened as carriers of chemical knowledge to attract students' attention and to mobilize students' enthusiasm for learning chemistry. A combination of several methods is used to assess the learning outcomes, and special attention is paid to the learning process and the progress of students. The investigation found that the course reform has achieved a good result and is suitable for the mode of general education courses of science and engineering in universities or colleges.