My 5 Wives

My first introduction to Rodney Dangerfield was `CaddyShack'. He was hilarious and witty. My 5 Wives is a watchable movie but does tend to be a stage for Rodney's old ‘one liners'. I had the occasional chuckles, but overall this one may get flack from some quarters for its subject matter. Rodney (twice divorced) moves to `Poligomyville' Utah to buy land to build a ski resort. On purchasing the land he finds himself the proud owner of 5 new wives also. That's right, the proud owner. When the original owner of the land died, the new owner gets his wives as part of the deal. Fortunately for Rodney (now well into his later years), all of his new wives are gorgeous 20 somethings. If you like risque', slapstick boy/girl gags, this one is for you. If you're looking for something with a little more to it. Leave it.

NOTICE: if you're slow to get one-liners, you won't get most of the jokes. If you're fast on your toes(you need to be, at least the first half of the movie is a full-speed-ahead barrage of one liners), and your mind is usually in the gutter, this is the movie for you. You might watch this a few times, and keep getting jokes that you didn't get before. Absolutely a riot. Dangerfield proves that he is still the coolest "Dirty old man" around. I laughed so hard I couldn't breath.

I almost burst into tears watching this movie. Not from laughing but from the memories of a great Rodney Dangerfield movie. Candyshack was his first and stole the movie, Easy Money had him at his best, and Back To School is by far an 80's classic masterpiece. Then there was Ladybugs and that's when it started to show. Poor Rodney was getting old (Meet Wally Sparks was a slight step up from Ladybugs but not saying much).

In My 5 Wives Rodney plays Monte (a name he must love since that was his name in Easy Money) a rich (isnt he always) guy who loves women and gets married like its nothing. Well now he inherits a huge piece of land and since the land was run by the Amish, he inherits 5 Wives. This sounds like a great idea for a Dangerfield movie. The problem is EVERYTHING. The script is so poor that Rodney seems to be saying his one liners to the camera and all the side characters have nothing to do. The movie looks like it was shot on video with some really poor stunt sequences that are obviously not Rodney. Andrew Dice Clay plays a gangster who looks like he is dying to say the F word (which he should since the film is rated R but plays as if it was PG) and Jerry Stiller has a nice 2 minute cameo. Don't get me wrong, at times I did laugh at a few of Rodney's jokes but the poor man is getting way too old and way too slow. We can see his jokes coming from miles. And the film turns way too PC which thanks to the horrible 1990's, the 70's and 80's Rodney just doesn't work anymore.

Being an avid Rodney fan, I probably liked this flick a lot more than if I weren't. I thought his last effort - Meet Wally Sparks - was pretty poor, and I found this to be an improvement, perhaps because it uses Rodney's old stand-up persona to greater effect. Once you pretend you don't know that polygamy is illegal in the U.S, you can sit back and enjoy the many jokes about the difficulty Rodney has in, er, fulfilling his husbandly duties toward his five wives. This is hardly a great comedy, but well worth catching for devoted fans of Mr. Dangerfield.

Even back then his style of humor was rarely used. Sure, most comics make fun of themselves from time to time but his was based on it all the time. It's something that if you didn't grow up with it you probably won't find it funny. The whole body shaming and other things that is so popular now is exactly what he did to himself. Would he be attacked for doing it to himself now?

Anyway, the show is far fetched like all of his movies. But it is basically a clean version of what was popular back then. A lot of his adult humor was based on innuendos and things only adults would get...Back then of course now not so much.

He's kind of the slap stick comedian but with words. Another flashback was Andrew Dice Clay. Now that was a comedian who was definitely r-rated. This is probably the longest he has ever made a show without swearing.

Give it a shot if you are a fan of the 80s, 90s because this is what it was all about. A lot of it is kind of dated because a lot of his routine was in a way social based and we have changed quite a bit since the 80s, IMO not all for the good.