They Don't Respect Him.
The late Rodney Dangerfield was a stand-up comic full of one liners, a latter day Henny Youngman. ("Take my wife -- please.") He's worked some amusing wisecracks into this movie too.
Dangerfield is the wealthy businessman whose son isn't doing well in school, and Dangerfield decides to enroll and help him through. The filming was done at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
It has its amusing moments. When an assignment involves doing an essay on Karl Vonnegut, Dangerfield hires Vonnegut to write the paper for him. But it isn't as keen as it might be, for a couple of reasons.
It's not a pure comedy like, oh, "One, Two, Three", "The In Laws", or "The Freshman." The narrative follows the well-worn path of introducing misunderstanding towards the end, followed by a triumphant celebration of the conflict's resolution.
That's pretty dreary, and another problem is that Rodney Dangerfield is a stand-up comic, not an actor. He delivers his lines with a high quotient of bluster, as if addressing a night club audience. Whether the lines are supposed to be serious or funny makes no difference.
Oddly enough, since it looks like a family movie, Dangerfield comes up with some risqué jokes. In a Jacuzzi with a couple of bimbos he makes a remark about his class in English literature and expresses the hope that they can help him out with his Longfellow.
Nobody else puts in a notable performance. How could they? Yet Terry Farrell as the nearly edible girl friend of Dangerfield's son is memorable. She hardly has anything to do, so I wonder why. I'm pondering it, I'm pondering it.
Dangerfield is the wealthy businessman whose son isn't doing well in school, and Dangerfield decides to enroll and help him through. The filming was done at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
It has its amusing moments. When an assignment involves doing an essay on Karl Vonnegut, Dangerfield hires Vonnegut to write the paper for him. But it isn't as keen as it might be, for a couple of reasons.
It's not a pure comedy like, oh, "One, Two, Three", "The In Laws", or "The Freshman." The narrative follows the well-worn path of introducing misunderstanding towards the end, followed by a triumphant celebration of the conflict's resolution.
That's pretty dreary, and another problem is that Rodney Dangerfield is a stand-up comic, not an actor. He delivers his lines with a high quotient of bluster, as if addressing a night club audience. Whether the lines are supposed to be serious or funny makes no difference.
Oddly enough, since it looks like a family movie, Dangerfield comes up with some risqué jokes. In a Jacuzzi with a couple of bimbos he makes a remark about his class in English literature and expresses the hope that they can help him out with his Longfellow.
Nobody else puts in a notable performance. How could they? Yet Terry Farrell as the nearly edible girl friend of Dangerfield's son is memorable. She hardly has anything to do, so I wonder why. I'm pondering it, I'm pondering it.
- rmax304823
- Jul 9, 2016