Back to School

An American comedy set at a university. Thornton Melon is a rich businessman. He built a chain of big and tall menswear shops and never went to school. His son Jason is at university. He lies to his father: he is in fact about to drop out. Thornton goes and sees. The boy is not on the swim team, he hands out towels, and he has no friends. He makes a decision: he will enrol too. Enrolling is easy. He donates a building. From there the film is a story about fitting in. He attends lectures, sits exams, and does none of it the normal way. He has his coursework done for him. For a literature assignment he hires the book's author directly. That scene is the film's best idea and it backfires in the end. There is an economics professor as well. He teaches theory in class; Thornton describes how the business actually works and the class listens to him. That conflict is the spine. What the narrative is interested in is not education but class: its idea is that money and knowledge can buy each other, and that neither side will admit it. Jason's line stays in the background. His father takes over his life and it takes him time to notice. The last section is a diving competition. He performs a dive and the whole section is preposterous. Rodney Dangerfield carries the tempo by himself. The character makes jokes constantly and the narrative sets him up. Rodney Dangerfield, Sally Kellerman, Burt Young, Keith Gordon, Robert Downey Jr. and Sam Kinison are in the cast. Alan Metter directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes 1980s American campus comedy. Who it is not for: anyone looking for structure; the narrative moves like a run of sketches and some of the jokes belong to their period.