By Richard Winters
My Rating: 3 out of 10
4-Word Review: Goldie coaches boy’s football.
Due to football season starting on Wednesday I have decided to incorporate a football themed movie for today’s 80’s movie review. It is story about a divorced mother of two (Goldie Hawn), who coaches a high school girl’s track team, but decides she wants to live out her dreams by coaching football instead. Unfortunately the only football job she can find is with a losing boys’ team in a tough inner-city high school.
This is a very uninspired, by the numbers ‘feel good’ sports movie. There actually seems to be more drama than comedy and what little comedy you get really isn’t very funny. Having a woman coach a boy’s football team would be enough of a challenge, but forcing her to do it in a tough inner-city school seems unnecessary. The players are one-dimensional and uninteresting. Even Hawn’s character is dull although Hawn herself is still engaging. The climactic game sequence is so predictable and full of clichés that it becomes almost excruciating to sit through. The film is also plagued by having that annoying 80’s music sound.
On the plus side I found it fun to watch Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson in their film debuts. It is also great to see Nipsey Russell although they don’t give him enough to do. He looks like he was only 38 even though, at the time, he was actually 68! Thad Thacker who is very large physically is amusing and the only interesting player on the whole team. His acting is nothing exceptional, but his ‘con-man’ routine has its moments. Actor James Keach, who plays the stereotypical ‘jerky’ ex-husband, ends up giving a surprisingly sturdy performance.
Overall the film is dull and predictable and hardly good for even a few cheap laughs. Why some people think this is so funny is beyond me because everything that is done here has been done better somewhere else.
My Rating: 3 out of 10
Released: February 14, 1986
Runtime: 1Hour 46Minutes
Rated R
Director: Michael Ritchie
Studio: Warner Brothers
Available: DVD, Amazon Instant Video
Scopophilia 