Rodney Dangerfield

I was a little saddened to hear that Rodney Dangerfield died this week. I remember watching Rodney doing stand up on HBO and being or delivering the punch line in the Lite Beer From Miller Gang commercials back when I was a kid. I've decided to memorialize Rodney with a brief review of all of his movies. Okay, not all of them, but all of them that I could come up with off the top of my head.

Rodney Dangerfield in Caddyshack

Caddyshack: Possibly the best comedy of all time, and certainly Rodney's best performance. Almost every scene in this movie is fantastic, and there are more quotable than Casablanca. Look no farther than that recent commercial with Tiger Woods doing scenes from Karl the groundskeeper to see that this one is still culturally relevant.

My favorite line won't read well, but I'll write it anyway. Rodney is in the pro shop talking a mile a minute. It goes something like this, "I'll take two of those three of these six of those golf towels a box of those naked lady tees...what's with this hat, you buy one and get a free bowl of soup?" He spots Ted Knight wearing the exact same hat. "It looks good on you though," accompanied by the most classic eye roll of all time. The gesture is genius.

How great would this movie have been if we didn't have to follow Danny Noonan around from scene to scene? And is there a more useless character in all of movie history than Maggie? Did they just need to pad the minutes to make it a little longer, or could they just not stomach a movie with no female character whatsoever? Oh well. At least they had the sense not to spend much time with it.

This was another one that I really liked. It's my second favorite. You don't hear too many people talk about it, but the jist is that Rodney is a regular working class guy, and he can become rich if he can give up unhealthy food, cuss words, smoking, and drinking for a year. It's a pretty good concept. I'm not rushing out to buy the DVD, but if it's on cable, I'll stick around and watch.

This one gets more run than the rest, and it has some pretty funny parts, I admit. But I have to say that it's pretty average overall. There's too much plot; the whole relationship with his kid stuff is weak. And the "Triple Lindy" dive that wins the meet is just stupid. Rodney Dangerfield flipping around the screen in slow motion is a little bit funny, but it's just too stupid for my taste. At least the Triple Lindy lives on as a menu item at Moes burrito shops around the nation.

I know that I saw this, and that it had that obnoxious woman from the TV show 227 in it with him. I remember that it had something to do with a girls' soccer team. I remember thinking that it was horrible. That's all I can recall.

You almost can't count this as a Rodney Dangerfield movie, but I do remember him as the creepy father of the girl killer for an uncomfortable scene in the beginning. I didn't really understand much of this movie, but that early scene with Rodney was most baffling. He would be dirty and creepy, and they played a 1960's style laugh track when he would say something. But he never said anything funny. It was just bizarre. I don't really recommend this movie, if you couldn't tell.