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Article: Movies; `Renaissance Man': Teacher Feature
- Article from:
- The Washington Post
- Article date:
- June 3, 1994
- Author:
CopyrightThis material is published under license from the Washington Post. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Washington Post. (Hide copyright information)
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"Renaissance Man," Penny Marshall's intellectually ambitious
new comedy, is an extravagant and all-too-familiar Hollywood
contradiction - a movie that celebrates the life of the mind and the
uniqueness of the individual but does so in glib slogans and is,
itself, a sort of knockoff.
Set in an Army training camp near Detroit, where an
ex-advertising man named Bill Rago (Danny DeVito) is reduced to
taking a job teaching underachieving recruits, "Renaissance Man"
comes across at first glance as little more than an olive-drab
reincarnation of "Dead Poets Society." And that holds true for the
second and third glance too.
Ostensibly based on the real-life experiences of Michigan ...