Penny Marshall, the director of Renaissance Man, is credited with only 7 feature length theatrical releases. While hardly anyone could dispute that Big and A League of Their Own deserve to be in the top slots (and Awakenings is also there, but I've never seen it) the other four movies are probably ranked variably. The four in question here are The Preacher's Wife, Riding in the Car with Boys, Jumpin' Jack Flash and Renaissance Man. (That order is the way they are listed, as the bottom of the list of the seven, on Rotten Tomatoes).
I never really liked the remake of the classic The Bishop's Wife although it was admittedly well done. And Jumpin' Jack Flash was just ridiculous. I can't say much about Riding in Cars with Boys, since that's another movie I haven't seen. But I think that Renaissance Man doesn't get as much love as it deserves. For one thing, there are some standout performances here. The movie features some up and coming actors and actresses in their first (or at least early roles).
Marky Mark Walberg got his first big meaty role here. Stacey Dash, Cher's (Alicia Silverstone) best friend in Clueless, Kadeem Hardison, a co-star on the Cosby Show spinoff, Lillo Brancato, Jr., who got his start in A Bronx Tale a year earlier, and Richard T. Jones, who most recently has been a member of the cast of the TV series The Rookie are among the stars.
Also featured in the cast were Gregory Hines as the drill sergeant, Sgt. Cass. Hines was a tap dancer turned actor who made several memorable roles come to life, such as the tap dancer Raymond Greenwood, an ex-patriot tap dancer living in Communist Russia in White Knights. James Remar, whose first prominent role was as Ajax in one of my favorite movies, The Warriors, plays Rago's main Army contact, Capt. Murdoch. Cliff Robertson also makes a brief appearance as Murdoch's superior, Colonel James.
With such talent, it seems a shame this movie never had the impact that it potentially could have had. Roger Ebert claimed that "the touch that was used so well in director Penny Marshall's previous films Big and A League of Their Own is totally missing in Renaissance Man and it feels like a cross between Dead Poet's Society and Private Benjamin but does not have the warmth or spirit of those films". Other critics found similar faults with the movie.
Renaissance Man (1994):
Bill Rago (Danny DeVito) is a struggling ad man who is trying to get a client interested in his sales pitch. The problem is that Bill is late for the meeting and having to do the sales pitch by cell phone. And why is he late? Because he is stuck in traffic. (A personal note: If MY job was on the line in this situation with a big money account on the line I'd just abandon the car and deal with the tow and fees later, but that's me.)
Because Bill has been having some personal issues that came prior to this incident, he is canned. And forced to go on unemployment. Rago has a rather abrasive attitude about this predicament, and gets on the wrong side with his case worker at the outset, but eventually she finds work for him. Although maybe not exactly what he is expecting. Or even wants.
It seems that the job given to him is to be a teacher to a batch of Army recruits who are about to wash out of the service because they have trouble comprehending. Just what they are having trouble comprehending is never fully established, and this is one of the few nitpicks I have with the film. It's not exactly like they are mentally deficient like Forrest Gump. Although the rest of the camp refers to them as the "Double D's", which stand for "dumb as dog $^:+".
The soldiers in question, Privates Donnie Benitez (Lillo Brancato, Jr.), Billy Davis, Jr. (Peter Simmons), Tommy Lee Haywood (Mark Wahlberg), Roosevelt Hobbs (Khalil Kain), Jackson Leroy (Richard T. Jones), Melvin Melvin (Greg Sporleder), Jamaal Montgomery (Kadeem Hardison), and Miranda Myers (Stacey Dash) are sent to this class because the commanding officer of the base thinks that they are worth saving rather than washing out because they have trouble in the brains department.
Bill, initially (as would I, to be honest) , has no idea what he is supposed to be doing. He got the job because he has a master's degree, although not one in English or any other teaching related fields. But in the tradition of government logic that master's degree he does have must mean he can teach, so...
The film struggles through it's first 15 minutes or so, after the initial setup of the premise, especially when it comes to how Bill is finding ways to accomplish the goal he has been hired to do. The assignment that he has given them at one point is to read something and tell about what they learned. He doesn't give them anything specific, just to bring something they can read to the class. One of the funnier sequences of the film involves Benitez trying to figure out what is going on in an Archie comic book.
The students ask Bill what he is reading and he tells them it is a Shakespeare play, "Hamlet". So, OK, maybe these guys aren't all on the ball, but none of them know who Shakespeare is. (Did they all drop out of school before they reached junior high?) When Bill tells them it's about "sex, murder, incest, insanity". Which, needless to say, intrigues these recruits. And thus, Bill has his new agenda, trying to teach them to understand the intricacies of the language of The Bard and what it all means.
Meanwhile Bill is becoming increasingly at odds with the recruits' drill sergeant, Sgt. Cass (Gregory Hines). (Cass, by the way, is never given a first name in the film, but Bill keeps calling him "Lou". Whether Bill had a combative relationship with a guy named Lou in his past is not revealed, or why he uses that particular name, but in the interest of this blog I will use that name from here on out).
Another funny incident occurs when Lou is chewing out Davis for showing up late for drill. Trying to get Lou to go easy on him only causes Lou to become even more hostile to Bill, as this is seen as an affront to his position of authority as a drill instructor. Bill tells Lou to chill out, calling Lou anal. "Gee, you must've been potty trained at gunpoint!" (And at this point, I'm thinking Lou might just try to do some impromptu potty-training on Bill).
As the lessons continue, Bill assigns each cadet with a role in the play. When Davis is assigned the role of Queen Gertrude he responds with shock. "Isn't that a girl's part?" To which Bill informs the cadets that in Shakespeare's day ALL parts were played by males. And Myers responds with a comment that "You mean that Romeo and Juliet were a couple of guys?" (Wait a minute, if none of these recruits know who Shakespeare is how does Myers know about "Romeo and Juliet"?)
Bill makes one rather grievous error during his tenure. He thinks that Pvt. Hobbs may be getting the short end of the shaft, that he may be brighter than anyone thinks, and has the superiors look into his record. Unfortunately this ends up revealing that Hobbs is on the lam from the authorities for having been charged with drug dealing, and ends up with his arrest. Bill is just as devastated by this turn of events as the recruits are, but he has to make some serious amends to regain their trust. Eventually Bill makes headway in his teaching and even takes the recruits on a trip across the border into Canada to see a performance of Henry V. (Another nitpick here. Is it even remotely possible that these recruits could go on a road trip during basic training without being accompanied by an officer? Just wondering.)
At one point in the film, the recruits, eager to show Bill they are actually getting what he is teaching, improvise a rap performance, in which all but one of the recruits join into the rap. The interesting thing about this scene is... the one guy not actually performing in the rap piece they have created? It's Marky Mark Wahlberg, the only bonafide rap artist in the movie... But Wahlberg was the writer of the rap piece, so his input was instrumental in it's own way.
Lou, who thinks this whole classroom thing is a waste of time, keeps trying to undermine Bill and his class. At one point he asks Melvin to recite some Shakespeare, but Melvin is not able to do it. But when Lou asks Benitez to recite Shakespeare, he quotes almost verbatim the St. Crispin's Day speech from the play they saw the other day, Henry V.
Bill has plans to present a final exam for the class, but this runs afoul with the higher ups, because if he fails any recruit they are potentially washed out as soldiers. Bill is determined though, but he presents it to the class that they will not be required to take the test. Of course, on the day of the test, the recruits do show up. (And how could it be any other way? The film would have been for naught if they all opted out).
There is some wrap in the transformation of Bill from a rather cynical and combative type to one who becomes more attuned to the feelings of those around him. One of the side stories is how Bill deals with his daughter, Emily (Alanna Ubach). Emily wants to be an astronomer, which Bill is dismissive of at first, but due to his transformation eventually comes to encourage her ambition.
Also, being helpful with his recruits ends up with having something good come out of that too, as Pvt, Davis' oft spouted belief that his daddy was a Vietnam War hero is vindicated when the top brass award him the Silver Star that should have been presented to his family 20 years earlier.
Renaissance Man was a bomb at the box office. It barely made half of it's production money back ($24 million against a budget of $40 million). The producers apparently didn't expect much from this movie at the outset. It was released in the summer (June 3) , for one thing, a time when blockbusters of the year would dominate the the theater. Renaissance Man had to compete with such dynamos of the big screen as Speed, True Lies, The Lion King, Beverly Hills Cop III and Wyatt Earp. And that's just during it's first two weeks. This is a movie that might have benefited from a later release, like maybe November, where the biggest competition was probably only Star Trek: Generations.
To be fair, the film does have some tendencies towards sentimentality that seems a bit out of place. The relationship between Stacey Dash's Private Myers and Khalil Kain's Private Hobbs is never fully established during the first half of the film, so her reaction to the arrest of Hobbs in the second half comes off as a bit contrived. And the final scene where Peter Simmons' Private Davis' devotion to his supposed Vietnam War hero dad is vindicated, although emotionally encouraging, seems to be there only for the effect.
I am dedicating this post to my friend, Rachel, of Hamlette's Soliloquy. Simply because of her love for the original Shakespeare classic play featured here.
Well folks, time to fire up the old Plymouth and head home. 4:30 reveille comes awful early.
Quiggy
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