Back To School (1986)

You're never too old to learn, even if you'd rather buy your way to a diploma. Alan Metter's comedy "Back to School," co-written by Harold Ramis among others, stars Rodney Dangerfield as Thornton Melon, a crude, fun-loving self-made millionaire whose chain of big-and-tall clothing stores has made him rich, even though he ignored his tailor father's pleas to stay in school and never finished high school. After catching his snobbish second wife (Adrienne Barbeau) cheating, Thornton pays a surprise visit to his shy son, Jason (Keith Gordon), at college and discovers the boy is miserable. Jason has been pretending to be a star on the diving team when he's really just the team's towel boy, and he's ready to quit. So Thornton decides to lend some fatherly support by enrolling as a freshman himself. With deep enough pockets to buy his way in, he throws lavish parties, turns his dorm room into a luxury suite and hires a team of experts, including NASA scientists and even novelist Kurt Vonnegut, to do his homework, with hilariously ironic results when his Vonnegut paper gets a failing grade. But when he clashes with a stuffy business professor (Paxton Whitehead) and then woos the man's girlfriend, a lovely literature professor (Sally Kellerman), Thornton pushes things too far. Accused of cheating, he must pass a grueling oral exam or be expelled, and now he'll have to hit the books for real, or go back to being the world's richest dropout. Robert Downey Jr. plays Jason's rebellious best friend, Terry Farrell is the pretty coed Jason falls for, William Zabka is her bullying boyfriend, Sam Kinison steals scenes as a volatile, shouting history teacher and Ned Beatty is the easily bribed dean. It all leads to a championship diving meet and Thornton's legendary "Triple Lindy," and Oingo Boingo performs at a party.