Rodman Flick Leaves Much To Be Desired

Saw the Dennis Rodman movie. Most of it. Some of it. Enough of it.

Dennis Rodman, the actor, is no Mr. T.

This is not a fault on the level of being, as a basketball player, no Horace Grant, which Rodman is not either, but clearly none of this matters. Rodman is beyond common comparisons and will no doubt continue to accept payment for being both an incomplete basketball creature and a goofy movie action figure.

His future is brighter as the second than the first.

By coincidence, while Rodman is recuperating from injury, leaving the Bulls to do perfectly fine without him, he has opened a film. This does allow those bereft by his absence an opportunity to soak up all the Rodman they can stand.

A day without Rodman is, after all, like a day without reptiles.

At the theater I attended, the front row was aisle to aisle with preteen boys, agape at Rodman’s assorted costumes, hair hues and pierced body parts. It did not matter to them that Rodman is no thespian, and they would giggle to hear that.

While these would appear to be Rodman’s core audience, it does not explain an abundance of matrons and adult males as well, not all of them forced to attend, as was I, by that harsh straw boss, duty.

My sympathies to those who do this sort of thing for a living. Reviewing movies must bring all the satisfaction of rediapering someone else’s baby.

I read a review somewhere that lamented that Rodman did not take off his sunglasses, and this made him look like a freak and not like a person.

This is a heartfelt suggestion, I must believe. I refuse to think the point could be missed entirely.

Rodman is to drama what eggnog is to ear wax. In other words, one has nothing to do with the other.

But, hey, Michael Jordan is no Bugs Bunny, either.

Apparently, Rodman can do nothing badly enough to keep people from paying attention to him, asking him to do it again or even wishing he could do it better.

Thus, Rodman can be expected to make another movie and to return to the Bulls, no matter that both enterprises can prosper on their own.

The Rodman freak quotient will max out eventually, and my guess is it will come when he speaks an intelligible sentence.

As long as he can grunt and mug, he will be a curiosity. When he learns to pronounce the word “irascible,” his career is over.

Rodman did have the good sense to appear in a movie with someone who has a hyphen in his name and larger marbles in his larynx than even Rodman. Jean-Claude Van Darn - this is a family publication - is the nominal star of “Double Team,” a movie that is, as far as I could tell, about blowing up things in the dark, wrecking automobiles and ramming people’s faces through closed windows.

Jean-Claude is from Belgium, an acceptable excuse, and apparently does this sort of thing all the time, hereas Rodman has to practice where he can, which may explain at least three of his suspensions.

I would like to give a fuller account of the plot, but I must admit that I did not stay all the way to the end.

This is my basketball application to filmgoing. You do not need to see more than the last 5 minutes of any basketball game or more than the first 5 minutes of any movie to know if the rest of it was/is worthwhile.

And if Rodman is in either one …