Back By Midnight (2002) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Back by Midnight is a typical Rodney Dangerfield "slobs versus snobs" vehicle. Rodney plays the warden of a minimum security prison which is being run for the state by a private contracting company. Rodney's greedy corporate bosses conspire to ignore the prison's needs and spend virtually nothing on it, thus pocketing the difference between what they get from the state and what they actually spend on the facility. This sleazy profit covers up the losses in their department store chain. Rodney gets so frustrated by the corporate moguls that he allows the inmates to leave the prison at night and rob the boss's stores for the supplies he needs to upgrade the prison.

Rodney seems very old and tired in this film, and he looks ill. His usual zingers have no zing. In spite of that, he's still the best thing in the film, which is written and performed at a broad, puerile level that makes F Troop seem like a segment of Masterpiece Theater. Here's a fact to scare you: although Back by Midnight stars Rodney Dangerfield and Randy Quaid, those two guys are the MOST subtle performers in the film. The next most important roles are:

• a safecracker named "Ears" with super-sensitive hearing. The actor actually wears gigantic prosthetic Dumbo ears.

• a convict named "Jerk-off" who actually says things like "du-u-u-u-h, I dunno"

• a 200 pound woman in light dominatrix outfits.

• an obnoxious monkey who climbs on a chandelier and pisses on Randy Quaid. ("Gold, Jerry, GOLD!")

• Gilbert Gottfried and Ron Jeremy. 'Nuff said.

(To Kirstie Alley's credit, she played the embarrassing fat woman role with good humor and lots of cleavage, and managed to be about as sexy as a woman that size can be.)

This film is so bad it has just been sitting on the shelves for a couple of years, and was released to DVD without fanfare and with no effort to promote the final starring role of a recently deceased comedy legend.

Rodney deserved a better send-off.