Terry Farrell | Through the Shattered Lens

Laura Mosbach (Terry Farrell) is a former basketball player who is hired to be the assistant coach of the Lady Warriors, a high school team. When the beloved Coach Holliday (Lawrence Dane) has a stroke during a game, Laura becomes the new head coach and had to deal with parents who want to win at any cost, players who think they can bend the rules, and a town where no one has a private life. If you think it’s difficult being a new coach, try being a new coach who is publicly dating the father (Adrian Pasdar) of a player who you’ve just made a starter. Coach Mosbacher coaches the team her way, telling them that they are no longer Lady Warriors but now Women Warriors.

There are so many scenes in this movie that just get stuck in your head for the wrong reason. I enjoyed Laura getting so frustrated that she threw a box of cereal at a wall, where it exploded in slow motion. And there’s the scene where two basketball teams decide to just end the game rather than play the second half because the adults got into a fight in the school parking lot. I’m sure that’s a decision that many teenagers would make. It felt like one of those commercials for the Foundation For A Better Life. “Sportsmanship, pass it on!” Coach Mosbacher tells the girls that its their decision and is shocked when the the town wants to fire her as a result.

The movie’s most satisfying moment is one that isn’t meant to be satisfying. Adrian Pasdar punches out a ref who hasn’t gotten one call right the entire game. Who among us hasn’t been tempted to do the same? Let those without sin cast the first stone.

I actually agree with the movie’s message about parents putting too much pressure on their kids to win at any cost. Lawrence Dane was good as the beloved coach and so saw Adrian Pasdar, as the father who seemed nice but ultimately turned out to be even worse than the other parents. Terry Farrell, though, gave a one-note performance as Laura and the film’s plot had too many unbelievable moments to work.

Thornton Melon (Rodney Dangerfield) started with nothing but through a combination of hard work and chutzpah, he started a chain of “Tall and Fat” clothing stores and made a fortune. Everyone has seen his commercials, the one where he asks his potential customers, “Do you look at the menu and say, ‘Okay?'” He has a new trophy wife named Vanessa (Adrienne Barbeau) and a chauffeur named Lou (Burt Young). Thornton never even graduated from high school but he gets respect.

However, his son, Jason (Keith Gordon), doesn’t get no respect. No respect at all. Jason is a student at a pricey university, where he is bullied by Chas Osborne (William Zabka) and can’t get a date to save his life. Jason’s only friend is campus weirdo Derek Lutz (Robert Downey, Jr.). When Thornton sees that his son isn’t having any fun, he decides to go back to school!

Back to School is a predictable but good-natured comedy. It is like almost every other 80s college comedy except, this time, it’s a 65 year-old man throwing raging parties and making the frat boys look stupid instead of Robert Carradine or Curtis Armstrong. On the stand-up stage, Dangerfield always played the (sometimes) lovable loser but in the movies, Dangerfield was always a winner. In both Caddyshack and Back to School, Dangerfield played a self-made man who forced his way into high society and showed up all of the snobs. While Back to School is no Caddyshack, it does feature Rodney at his best.

Rodney may be the funniest thing about Back to School but a close second is Sam Kinison, who owed much of his early success to Rodney Dangerfield’s support. Kinison plays a history professor, who has some very strongly held views about the Vietnam War and who punctuates his points with a primal screen.

Also, keep an eye out Kurt Vonnegut, playing himself. Rodney hires him to write a paper about Kurt Vonnegut for one of his classes. The paper gets an F because Rodney’s literature professor (Sally Kellerman) can tell that not only did Rodney not write it but whoever did knows absolutely nothing about the work of Kurt Vonnegut.

So it goes.