The attitude was not a surprise – he was warning Johnny Carson not to expect any more Rodney Dangerfield movies two nights before Caddyshack <\/em>even opened <\/a>– but it does reiterate why he only made three credited film appearances during the only decade of his career hot enough to record a Grammy-nominated rap single<\/a>. As much as he hated the \u201ccomic\u2019s nightmare<\/a>\u201d of endlessly performing to an audience of shushed grips, the movies are why he lives on in multiple<\/a> shapes<\/a> of collectible plastic today, and there\u2019s only one cinematic moment that could\u2019ve made a Hallmark ornament<\/a> out of a man so ugly he once went over to a girl\u2019s house because she said there was nobody home and there was nobody home: the rise of the slobs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With 1978\u2019s National Lampoon\u2019s Animal House<\/em>, the unruly trinity of John Landis, Harold Ramis, and Ivan Reitman combined forces on the foundational slobs-versus-snobs text and posited an alternative to punching up – dragging them down to your level and beating them senseless with experience. By 1984\u2019s Ghostbusters<\/em>, the formula had been so perverted that the slobs carried PhDs and the snob was federal oversight of nuclear waste disposal. But a year prior, halfway between Caddyshack <\/em>and Back to School<\/em>, Dangerfield made the strangest slob-versus-snob fable of them all without any of its chief practitioners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Easy Money<\/em>, for once, the slobs lose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Monty Capuletti may be a children\u2019s photographer from Staten Island, but character and comic become inseparable with the first line, the Dangerfield joke distilled to its bleakest essence: \u201cHey, take it easy, will ya?\u201d His youngest hogs the bathroom. His oldest is engaged to a gang banger. His wife likes the gang banger (\u201cIt\u2019s a good boys gang!\u201d). His mother-in-law still brings up her daughter\u2019s older, better flames. His brother-in-law wouldn\u2019t touch him to disown him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n To cope with the heaviness<\/a>, Monty spends his precious down time with drinking buddies Nicky and Paddy. In a single night out, they lose big on horses, almost get thrown out of a strip club, lose even bigger on dice, find the only two all-night diners with closing times, and annihilate the happy couple\u2019s wedding cake in the kind of drunk driving accident that\u2019s too silly to register as a moment of clarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Her scheme is to leave him the family\u2019s $10-million department store empire if, and only <\/em>if, he can refrain from gambling, drinking, and smoking for an entire year. There\u2019s also a cheating clause, but in one of the movie\u2019s surprisingly tender mercies, it\u2019s never in question that he loves his wife, even if he does make walleyes at the topless sunbather next door.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m constantly fighting self-abuse<\/a>,\u201d said Rodney in an interview between production and release, after he\u2019d picked up cigarettes again since quitting for the sake of his big number. The script, Rodney\u2019s first credited, neither mocks nor celebrates his habits. The only joke about Monty\u2019s weed habit is where he hides it – a roach motel in the bathroom. When his brother-in-law commissions an entire clothing line to humiliate him, the resulting fashion show is garish, but not funny. Neither is the following scene, when Monty breaks down in front of his wife: \u201cWe\u2019re not supposed to be rich. We don\u2019t look rich. We don\u2019t talk rich. We don\u2019t smell rich.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He doesn\u2019t and, to the credit of the casting department, nobody else does on Monty\u2019s side of town. A dartboard would never book Joe Pesci and Tom Noonan as a double act, and yet they feel like locals pulled off conjoined barstools. If the slob-vs-snob paradigm holds, Monty and his merry band should win on their terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Instead, Monty wins by the book, to the extinction of everything that brings him joy, and his reward comes with a pleasant surprise – his mother-in-law, who faked her death to teach him a lesson. The attached strings will stay that way so she can make him dance for the rest of her natural life. But hey, at least he gets to covertly enjoy the occasional trans fat in the basement of her palatial estate. So much for everybody getting laid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dangerfield promised he\u2019d be shooting a remake of W.C. Fields\u2019s My Little Chickadee<\/em><\/a> within the year, but wouldn\u2019t return to theaters until Back to School<\/em>. He intended that character to be poor, too, but co-writer Ramis thought he was funnier<\/a> in the Caddyshack <\/em>tax bracket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is no off-the-rack Monty Capuletti costume<\/a>. The film\u2019s legacy is, at best, second-hand – Dangerfield asking Billy Joel for a title song inspired him to write the 7-time platinum album An Innocent Man<\/em><\/a>, Catherine Scorsese makes her first cameo in a movie not made by her son. According to just about anyone, it\u2019s not the best Rodney Dangerfield movie. But in ways he\u2019d never explore again, Easy Money <\/em>is the most <\/em>Rodney Dangerfield movie. <\/p>\n\n\n\n You can tell because it gets no respect. No respect at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Easy Money” is streaming on Tubi <\/a>and PlutoTV,<\/a> and available elsewhere<\/a> for digital rental or purchase.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/easy-money2-1024x555.jpg\")
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He is a man of unapologetic, even necessary vice, which is why his uppercrust mother-in-law would rather see him dead than related. She\u2019s so evil that his rousing rendition of \u201cFuniculi Funicula\u201d is what convinces her to destroy him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n