One of the most moving experiences in cinema I had during the Nineties was watching Renaissance Man. It's more than a comedy about underachievers realizing their potential. It's about the man who makes them realize their worth as human beings getting quite an education about life himself.

Danny DeVito is that man in a role about as far removed as you can get from Louis DePalma in Taxi and Lawrence Garfield in Other People's Money. He's an advertising man who loses a couple of big clients while getting stuck in traffic and gets bounced from his job.

Needing an income while looking for a job, the Michigan Unemployment Department gives him an interesting job, a civilian remedial education teacher for the United States Army. He's assigned to a class of eight trainees who might wash out if they don't shape up. It's their mental attitudes that need adjusting.

A little trial and error and DeVito hits upon the idea to use Shakespeare, specifically Hamlet as a teaching tool. Interpreting and learning life's lesson from one of the greatest works of literature in the English language apparently works and in ways far beyond making these trainees get through basic training.

This is my favorite film with Danny DeVito and he's not an easy fit into army life. Cliff Robertson, James Remar, and Gregory Hines are some of the army people he deals with.

But the eight trainees are the heart of the film. Mark Wahlberg, Lillo Brancato, Kadeem Hardison, Richard Jones, Khalil Kain, Gregory Sporleto, Stacey Dash are seven of them. One of them doesn't make it through and ironically because of an act of kindness. But my favorite in the film is Peter Simmons who plays Private Brian Davis from Grand Forks, North Dakota. It's young men like him and his father before him in Vietnam who was killed in action who keep this country safe and secure. He gets the best recognition possible at the end of the film and you are guaranteed not to have a dry eye when you see it.

Renaissance Man is a beautifully crafted film from Penny Marshall and should not be missed when broadcast.

The director, Penny Marshall, belongs to a group that includes Ron Howard and Rob Reiner. They reliably produce family movies that are commercial in that they're emotionally satisfying, politically correct, show little or no smoking, and are without special challenge. Their products are to movies as Time Magazine is to news. That doesn't necessarily mean they're poor movies. You want basic news in a familiar format, you read Time Magazine.

In this case, poor Danny DeVito is an award-winning advertising man who loses his job and takes the only alternative -- teaching on an army base to a dozen soldiers who are marginal and need to be taught to think.

The diverse students are scornful, having been ordered to attend the class. DeVito feels hopeless. But, bit by bit, both DeVito and the class come around to mutually relish the bond they've formed. On top of that, DeVito, who marched against the Vietnam war, accommodates himself to the army, and the students learn the difference between a simile and a metaphor.

It has its funny moments -- DeVito stranded on top of a tall tower -- but the underlying theme is a serious one. That's how you make a commercial movie that the whole family will enjoy. It's not an insult to the intelligence, not an orgy of blood, not based on a comic strip or a cartoon character, and it has a happy ending. The ending is predictable because it's part of a friendly formula: mismatched teacher and class who learn from each other, as in "The Blackboard Jungle," "The Private War of Major Benson," or "To Sir, With Love." The reason it's part of a formula is that it's been proved to work.

On the whole, the students may be ignorant, in the sense of not knowing much about high culture or grammar. They may not be able to write twelve-tone music, but they're not stupid, in the sense of being unable to learn quickly. I taught night school at Camp Lejeune and the Marines were as bright as any, and a few were very quick on their mental feet indeed.

Halt thyself, thou knave. I shall tell thee of a film in which a great thespian of our time plays a man who teacheth a group of milit'ry people about one of the greatest playwrights of all time. Never have these men and wenches known such masterful work, but eager they are to learn.

OK, I'll cut the Shakespearean talk. But the point is that "Renaissance Man" is a really cool movie, with Danny DeVito as a literature teacher who joins the army and teaches some of the recruits about Shakespeare. This was certainly one of the under-appreciated comedies of the 1990s (specifically, one showing that you don't need scatological humor to make a good comedy). At the very least, it should be interesting to see Mark Wahlberg in his film debut. But even beyond that, I would say that there's lots to admire here. I definitely recommend it.

Also starring Kadeem Hardison and Cliff Robertson.