Back to School (Alan Metter, 1986) (Patreon)

BY REQUEST: Michael Dodson

Okay, so a little context. When I first started making top ten lists going back through the years, I felt like I needed to be honest about my experience of the Films of the 1980s. I wasn't a cinephile as a kid, and I guess I thought that it wasn't entirely fair to revise my feelings (can't call them "opinions," exactly) regarding the films I grew up with. What I remembered about Back to School, Caddyshack, Major League, and of course Airplane! was that when I encountered them on cable, flipping through the channels, I would stop and watch them, no matter what else I was doing. And although this is hardly a mark of aesthetic value, it's something, some indicator of the relationship, at that time, between myself and the film.

So when Michael requested that I revisit Back to School, I felt an awkward tinge. I was going to have to look back at the crap I used to like and face it, being almost forty years older and having a very different attitude toward comedy as well as cinema. I was immediately reminded of this internet gem, and figured I had finally been Called Out. [ADAM CURTIS VOICE] But then, something strange happened. For the most part, I still like Back to School. Of course it's flaws are far more evident to me now. There are bad gags and entire scenes ("Twist and Shout") that owe their presence to Rodney Dangerfield's predilection for grotesque mugging. And with this, only four years after Creepshow ("tell it to call you Billie!"), it's hard seeing Adrienne Barbeau typecast as an arriviste shrew.

The direction is merely competent. The director of Back to School isn't an auteur so much as a Metter-en-scène. (Har har.) But there's enough actual weirdness to make it watchable. The expected slobs-vs.-snobs comedy that's Dangerfield's metier does allow for a number of high-culture jokes, a Woody Allen reference (Kurt Vonnegut cameo), and a party set-piece that serves as a showcase for Oingo Boingo. (This was Danny Elfman's second Hollywood scoring gig, following Pee-wee's Big Adventure.) Harold Ramis was one of six credited writers, and the unreconstructed auteurist in me wants to assume he brought most of the heat. But who knows? Regardless, the MVP here is Robert Downey, Jr., embodying someone's university recollection of an irksome queer anarchist. Anyway, not a top tenner, but it's fine.