BACK TO SCHOOL

Rip It Up, Issue 113, 1 December 1986, Page 42

BACK TO SCHOOL

Director: Alan Metter Rodney Dangerfield is one of America’s most popular comedians and this film, his first starring vehicle, has been a mega-success in the States. How well it will fare in this part of the world is a matter for some conjecture as New Zealanders have not always taken to American comedians — the failure of the Steve Martin/Lily Tomlin All of Me being a case in

point. Back to School has a shamelessly rudimentary plot. To encourage his son to stay at university, millionaire Thornton Melon (Dangerfield) enrols himself at the institution. To gain entrance, he bribes the eminently corruptible Dean (Ned Beatty) by contributing a new business school to the campus. Once enrolled, he proceeds to play the system for all its worth, hiring Nasa officials to do his son’s astronomy homeowrk, and calling in Kurt Vonnegut himself to help him on his Vonnegut paper. There are few surprises amongst the jokes: “She gives good headache,” cracks Dangerfield about his wife (Adrienne Barbeau recycling her Creep Show harridan). On another occasion, lounging in a spa pool for four curvaceous starlets, he asks one who

professes to be studying poetry whether she might straighten out his Longfellow. Predictably, when Dangerfield is on screen, no one stands much of a chance, least of all the bland company of younger players (the trio of sultry ladies in the rock band backing Dangerfield’s ‘Twist and Shout’ look much more promising). Sally Kellerman, 16 years on from M.A.S.H., and looking distinctly ravaged, plays an english professor with a self-conscious, gangling casualness that is quite bizarre. Emotional states are complemented by her wardrobe colours — co-ordinated pink boots and jumper for lecturing on F Scott Fitzgerald’s Great Gatsby, a simple khaki shirt when Dangerfield has disappointed her. On the surface, Back to School seems a harmless romp for the teenage summer market, but it’s difficult to ignore the philistinism and cynicism that lie beneath. For one thing, I’m not too sure the film’s equating of money and power is intended to be ironic or not. There’s also an undercurrent of violence that is disturbing — “I put one son through college and the other through a wall,” remarks Dangerfield’s chauffeur-come-bodyguard at one point. When the violence is integrated with the character, as in Sam Kinison’s mad Vietnam vet history professor, it works, otherwise one is left with the suspicion that somewhere the Moral Majority is flexing its collective muscles. After all, Reagan is said to quote this Dangerfield man. William Dart