THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 9, 1994 TAG: 9406090064
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, ENTERTAINMENT WRITER
DATELINE: 940609 LENGTH: Medium
Danny DeVito, again playing an irascible teddy bear, reluctantly becomes a teacher to eight misfit recruits on an Army post outside Detroit. He is disillusioned with life and doesn't care about them, or himself. They, in turn, are either exiled urban troublemakers or backward country types. Everybody could obviously stand some changing here.
{REST} Once they learn about Shakespeare, everything turns out fine. The kids also learn about discipline and responsibility. Danny's character learns to care about them. At their graduation ceremony, we are clearly supposed to pull for a handkerchief. But after more than two hours, some will be pulling for the exit.
It would take a better director than Penny Marshall to bring off this hastily glued together premise. Marshall is one of the few working female directors and the only one who has produced two huge ($100 million plus) hits (``A League of Their Own'' and ``Big''). She has been given something of a free ride by critics, who want to encourage her apparent interest in cuddly plots tempered with peppery comedy.
This one, though, is simply wrapped in cellophane. You see right through it.
For the early scenes, it looks like a standard ``service'' comedy - a little like it wants to be ``Stripes'' or ``No Time for Sergeants.'' DeVito's character, Bill Rago, is so persistently ignorant of all things military that he seems a good deal more dimwitted than his class. He's mortified by having to get up at 4 a.m. and by people who put value judgments on how many push-ups can be done.
Before long, the broad, rather silly comedy is dropped in favor of becoming more like ``Dead Poet's Society'' - a melodrama about rebirth.
The eight misfits (seven guys and one woman) have varied hard-luck stories. One joined the Army to escape going to jail. One is a former star athlete who is unwanted by the world since being sidelined by an injury. Another worships the memory of his father, whom he believes to have been a war hero. Another, played by the stripper-rapper Marky Mark, is a backwoods Georgia boy.
The kids work hard and, indeed, outshine Devito's walk-through presence. Given a little more information, and dramatization, we could care about them. As it is, they are only so many stereotypes trotted out quickly and then fading into the background.
DeVito teaches them about ``Hamlet'' in classroom scenes that approach literacy and genuine humor for the Shakespeare-educated but may eventually grind the nerves of those who have been fooled by TV commercials into thinking this is a raucous comedy.
Gregory Hines makes a smallish appearance as a hardened drill sergeant. DeVito is so unreasonable in his criticism of the Army's discipline that, for a change, you come away thinking the Army was in the right. The decidedly pro-military treatment explains why Fort Jackson, near Columbia, S.C., provided both personnel and facilities to the movie makers.
There are many good ideas here, but none of them is developed. The most intriguing is the film's apparent claim that the country's educational system has failed these young people. All of them have a high school degree, but none of knows anything. But once touched, the theme is never driven - either home or anywhere else.
Marky Mark acquits himself surprisingly well, as does Lillo Brancato Jr., who played Robert DeNiro's son in the overlooked little gem ``A Bronx Tale.''.
``Renaissance Man'' wants us to cry as well as laugh on cue. But you'll have to be in the right mood if you're going to snap to and salute with the proper emotion.
by CNB