Back to School

1986's BACK TO SCHOOL is easily Rodney Dangerfield's finest hour on film, another Star Vehicle that exists simply to showcase its lead.  But what else would you want?  Even though this film has an A-Z plot (a bit more than say, CADDYSHACK) most of what he says is stolen directly from his stand-up act.  I grew up listening to the albums and watching the cable specials, so I knew 'em all.  Such as, "I like having two girls, so if I fall asleep they have each other to talk to."   Rodney gets a story credit along with Greg Fields and Dennis Snee, and the screenplay was written/concocted by Steven Kampmann, Will Porter, Peter Torokvei, and Harold Ramis.  But you just know there was plenty of ad libbing and comedic overdubbing of the script, as it were.

Said plot seems like something out of the 1930s, as did Rodney's EASY MONEY from a few years earlier.   Here he plays Thornton Melon, who never got very far in school but nonetheless became a self made millionaire as the owner of a chain of clothing stores for men whose sizes have at least two Xs.  His son Jason (Keith Gordon) is in college but hasn't quite adjusted and contemplates dropping out.  As Thornton's marriage to Jason's stepmother,  the younger, cheating Vanessa (Adrienne Barbeau) is a wash anyway, he decides to visit Jason and eventually enroll himself as a student at his university.  

Can this crude but good hearted old guy from Brooklyn cut it collegiately? Can he even pass his courses? Will he inspire or merely embarrass his kid? Will he be able to pull off the triple Lindy?   A good set-up, and director Alan Metter moves the traffic along efficiently.  Eh, maybe he contributes a bit to the comic timing but I suspect most of it was manufactured by the cast, which is quite good.

In addition to the aforementioned, we have Burt Young as Melon's bodyguard Lou, M. Emmett Walsh as a swim coach, Robert Downey Jr. as Jason's eccentric friend Derek,  Sally Kellerman as the English professor Thornton falls for, and Ned Beatty as uh, "Dean Martin."  There is also a memorable cameo by Sam Kinison as a fiery history teacher and yes, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. as himself, who can't even write a paper about his own work to the English prof's satisfaction. 

BACK TO SCHOOL treads the line skillfully between the vulgar and the heartwarming.  It is slightly more family friendly than Rodney's earlier films, and the comedian really comes into his own here - cocky, confident, yet warm.  Is he just playing himself? Yeah, but for the more dramatic moments the screenplay contrives he holds his own nicely.   The sentiment works surprisingly well, but in the end what keeps this buzzing are Rodney's endless one-liners, one of my favorite being "I need to straighten out my Longfellow".