‘Renaissance’ Fans Take It Seriously

Danny DeVito plays an unemployed ad executive who grudgingly takes a job teaching eight educationally challenged Army recruits at a local post. (Rated PG-13)

If you don’t want the kids to come along with you to see “Renaissance Man,” tell them that most of the pivotal scenes take place inside a classroom, deep in the throes of Shakespeare.

On the other hand, if you’re planning to take them and want to stoke the fires of expectation, remind them that Danny DeVito rappels ingloriously down the side of an Army training tower.

Nope, it’s not all nonstop yuks in this formula comedy--a kind of “Welcome Back, Kotter” in fatigues.

Serious personal issues are addressed, from the wrenchingly deprived backgrounds of DeVito’s supposedly dumbbell students to the very real need to teach them how to survive in combat, Shakespeare or no Shakespeare.

Still, the film is peppered with enough boisterous hokum to reel kids back in just about the time the action tends gets earnest.

The rap song, for instance.

Jeremy Amthor and Ryan Sandoval, both 13, said the scene that stood out for them was the students’ performance of a rap number based--as loosely as a pair of fatigue pants--on Hamlet’s soliloquy.

Music, of a sort, also figured in 12-year-old Joe Zorrilla’s analysis. He said he liked the Shakespeare rap, but “I also liked it when they made up funny marching songs.”

Not songs, actually, but cadences to keep time as they marched. And nothing so dry as a simple “hut-two-three-four.” The modern Army, apparently, drills to R&B.; And drill sergeant Gregory Hines marches his charges up a hill to the lyrics of “Tiny Bubbles.”

There being no kids in the film, apart from the brief role of DeVito’s daughter and rapper Marky Mark, who plays one of the students, DeVito got the nod as the kids’ favorite.

Maybe it was the advertising buildup on TV, but nearly every kid mentioned DeVito’s tiptoe descent of the “victory tower.”

“He was really funny when he had to get down that tower and he got scared,” said Danny Dickson, 10.

Eleven-year-old Zach Stone also enjoyed the sight of DeVito twisting slowly, slowly in the wind, but he said he also appreciated the intellectual awakening of the students and “how they all came together and became stronger, and in the end when they all saluted (DeVito).”

“Renaissance Man” can be a tear-jerker at times, but no self-respecting kid will ever admit to being affected. Jeremy deflected the pathos onto Roberta Steponovich, who had taken him and Ryan to the screening.

“She cried through the whole thing,” he said. “I think she really came to see Marky Mark.”

Though virtually all the kids who attended two screenings of “Renaissance Man” came out of the theater with thoughtful looks rather than grinning replays of gags, all pronounced it funny.

Jeff Zorrilla, 10, one of three Zorrilla brothers attending the movie with their parents, said it was “really funny. But I really liked it when they went to the play.”

His mom wasn’t sure she heard him correctly. Could he have actually enjoyed the scene in which DeVito takes his class to a performance of “Henry V”?

“You mean when they were singing on the way to the play, right?” she said.

“No, the play,” said Jeff, who added that he’d like to go to a real Shakespearean performance.

The Bard, apparently, also plays well in khaki.