A few years ago during the annual Twelve Days of Christmas series, I wrote about my very brief second year at Kansas State. I learned a few weeks before returning to Manhattan that my roommate and best friend for life, Steve, wasn’t going back for our sophomore year. To say I was uneasy about going back is an understatement.
Despite my trepidation, I went. It wasn’t a fun experience and lasted all of one week. In particular, I didn’t care for my roommate. We were very different, but the bottom line is he just wasn’t Steve. I was a sophomore for one day at K-State, attending a Spanish class before officially dropping out because I had to prove that I went to a class before scraping my financial aid.
I don’t remember much about that week, but I do remember going shopping in Topeka right before I left, an annual (and stupid) tradition of blowing student loan money when the checks came. Two purchases from that trip come to mind: the Super Nintendo game Bases Loaded II, which I still have, and the topic of Day Four: the 1991 movie “Dutch.”
I did not watch the movie during my short stay at K-State, and it sat on my desk at home for weeks before I finally slid it into the VCR (really dating myself here). This was 1995, before the Internet really became a thing, so I had no idea that “Dutch” was universally hated by critics.
The movie, which grossed only $4.5 million against a $17 million budget, stars Ed O’Neill of “Modern Family” and “Married … with Children” fame, Ethan Embry, JoBeth Williams and Christopher McDonald (you know him as Shooter McGavin). John Hughes, whose career was fading after his work exploded in the 1980s, wrote the screenplay, which tells the story of a working-class man who picks up his girlfriend’s son, a snobby, spoiled-rotten pre-teen, to drive him home for Thanksgiving.
From the get-go, Doyle, the son, and Dutch (O’Neill) despise one another. They drive across the country, exchanging a slew of insults and the occasional act of violence, usually by Doyle, including having Dutch’s car destroyed by a semi.
“Dutch” is widely considered one of worst films of 1991, receiving 1.5 stars from the likes of Roger Ebert, and a 17-percent rating at Rotten Tomatoes. O’Neill, who even took a shot at the movie on “Married … with Children,” said that Hughes stopped talking to him after the movie tanked.
But here’s the thing … I actually love this movie. In 1995, after I returned home from K-State, I finally took the time to watch it around Thanksgiving and enjoyed it a great deal, perhaps because it reminded me of “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” (though not nearly as good).
Laughs and smiles were few and far between that fall and autumn. Though I ended up at community college and writing for the Osage County Chronicle, I often felt like a failure for running home from a big school that semester. “Dutch,” while not everybody’s (or seemingly anybody’s) cup of tea, was the mindless, simple humor I needed during that time.
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