What happens when a portly man in his 60s named Thornton Melon enrolls in college to be with his son? What happens when that man is a loutish, impulsive, and outspoken clothing magnate with no academic background but loads of practical life lessons? When that man is played by Rodney Dangerfield, the result is Back to School, the sixth-highest-grossing film of 1986.
The premise of the old man returning to college wasn’t new. Just the year before, Disney aired a made-for-TV movie, The Undergrads, starring Art Carney. Bing Crosby had done it in Blake Edwards’s High Time (1960), including the subplot of falling in love with the teacher. The difference is while Bing sang (“The Second Time Around”), Rodney was a bit more direct. To a woman at the bookstore: “I’d like to tame your shrew.” Describing his awful second wife Vanessa, he says, “She gives good headache.” Back to School is not for the woke of heart.
In fact, a trigger warning may be in order: When a female student tells Thornton her favorite subject is poetry, he replies, “Maybe you can straighten out my Longfellow.” His chain of department stores is called Tall & Fat. Needless to say, the jokes target the fat (“When you go to the zoo, do the elephants throw you peanuts?”). And when he looks for his son in a sorority house—mistaking it for a fraternity—he walks into a shower, pulls open a curtain, and asks, “Have you seen Jason?” A naked nubile coed screams. He shuts the curtain, then opens it briefly, eyes agog, adding, “You’re perfect.”
Speaking of eyes agog, Rodney Dangerfield is not the most obvious leading man (in a year that featured leading men Tom Cruise and Rob Lowe). He was 64 at the time but, as Jay Nordlinger noted in his review of Nothin’ Comes Easy, Dangerfield didn’t make it big until his appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show, when he was 45. Then came regular stints on The Tonight Show, countless comedy club acts, and Caddyshack in 1980, which catapulted him to Hollywood stardom. Except the follow-on movie, Easy Money (1983), was both a critical and commercial flop. Thankfully Orion Pictures was willing to give Dangerfield another shot. It paid off—Back to School finished the year with $91 million, edging out James Cameron’s Aliens.
So what made Back to School a box office smash? Whereas Easy Money featured Rodney doing his shtick, without a compelling angle (he needs to “behave” in order to inherit his mother-in-law’s fortune), the bits come off as obnoxious or flat (“skimpy in the joke department and flabby in every other way,” wrote the Hartford Courant).
Certainly the casting helped, including Sally Kellerman as Thornton’s love interest (who rails against men being too sensitive!), Burt Young as his bodyman, Keith Gordon as Thornton’s deeply insecure son Jason, and Jason’s brash roommate Derek, played by a 20-year-old Robert Downey Jr. There’s also comedian Sam Kinison as the memorably unhinged Prof. Turguson, and William Zabka who, after portraying bullies in Just One of the Guys and The Karate Kid, took on the role of Chas Osborn, a swim jock and, well, bully.
It turns out Thornton was himself a swimmer in his youth, known for a daring pier dive called the Triple Lindy. Jason, meanwhile, lies to his father, saying he made the team but is actually the towel boy—until Thornton asks the coach to give him a second chance. The son eventually makes the team but suspects a payoff was involved.
Which brings us to a timely theme: plagiarism. Rather than study for his finals, Thornton pays his staff to write the papers for him (at one point, he even brings in Kurt Vonnegut to write a paper on Kurt Vonnegut). These antics lead to charges of academic fraud and a final challenge to retake the exams orally.
But what makes the movie work is Rodney. In Nothin’ Comes Easy, author Michael Seth Starr quotes Harold Ramis, the director of Caddyshack. After the comedian misses his cue, Ramis tells him, “Rodney, when I call ‘Action,’ that’s your cue to come in and do the scene.” “You mean do my bit?” “Yes, do your bit.” In other words, Back to School is a poignant father-son storyline framed around a 96-minute stand-up routine.
As I recently rewatched it, there were details I’d forgotten. The school is Grand Lakes (in reality the University of Wisconsin-Madison) and the team is nicknamed the Hooters. It’s fitting that Thornton Melon’s original last name was Meloni—Dangerfield was born Jacob Cohen. And during his commencement address, he advises the graduating class not to go into the real world, “move back with your parents, let them worry about it!” Of course at the time this was played for laughs. As Christine Rosen noted in her review of About Last Night, “Many of us were ‘adulting’ at an age when today’s young people are still heavily reliant on their parents for financial and emotional support.”
So do the jokes still land, 40 years later? Admittedly, many of the gags are crude, such as when Thornton emerges from a hot tub wearing a mask and snorkel surrounded by bikini-clad coeds and says, “Now that’s what I call marine biology!” Hence, my trigger warning. And if that just made you laugh, check your local listings.
Editor’s note: This retrospective review is one in a series celebrating 1986, arguably the greatest year in movies—inarguably if you’re Gen X.
Victorino Matus is the Arts & Culture editor of the Washington Free Beacon.
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