This film tells the story of the extraordinary lengths colleges will go, at least at that time, to recruit high school football heroes. For comedy, you need to exaggerate...but I'm not sure this movie actually does so it lands flat. I didn't laugh once. The movie is set at Ashford High School, but we never learn if this is Midwest, South, North...where? Not sure if that helps or hurts the film but is an interesting lack of detail, which this entire movie appears to be broad strokes. The entire film is loose and characters lack depth and motives. The story feels like it wanders and is episodic. It does settle down on a theme about an hour in, but it is so muddled up to that it just is too little too late. I was already feeling like I was under assault. When the movie peaks, there is the speech at the auditorium which seems completely out of place and felt to me like a defendant that claims to find Jesus at the last minute before sentencing. In the Ol' Tex sequence, I was thinking the gal that seduced him looked a little mature and wondered how that would work anyway. Predictably, she was in fact a little old for him. Anthony Michael Hall is completely miscast. His character, on paper, is an arrogant high schooler with amazing physical abilities. AMH doesn't look the part and can't really do the arrogance. The whole movie appears to be wish fulfillment for AMH the actor "Oh, you are so great" His attempts to play drunk begins and ends with him stumbling over furniture. So lame. This is not good work. Watch Out of Bounds or something. Not this trash. The character is a tough one to hang a movie off of when you dislike him so much. No one can look so awkward when trying to be cool, which hurts what the point of the character was. He should have oozed cool, which a Tom Cruise can do so well. I kept thinking Emilio Estevez would have been far better in the role, but I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy let alone one of my favorite Brat Packers. Robert Downey Jr. is pretty annoying here. His best work was in a movie called Kiss Kiss Bang Bang that I'm convinced not enough people have seen. I would say this is the worst teaming of Anthony Michael Hall and Robert Downey Jr. but that is actually the film AMH directed, Hail Caesar, which may have been about the worst film I ever saw. The existence of that film helps this one. I'm convinced my familiarity with truly rotten cinema helps Jeff a lot on this show, since a one from me is really, really bad since I've seen so many stinkers. The NCAA inspector sure looked a lot like Robert Downey Jr's old man. I think it is referenced since he disparages the movie at the drive in which was number from Putney Swope, which he directed if memory serves. If they got him, what a waste. Paul Gleason was solid as always (principal from The Breakfast Club and head cop in Die Hard). He gives the best line in the movie: "If you want sympathy, look in the dictionary between shit and syphilis." That's it. That's the best line. The pranks on the coach piled on each other: elephants, pizza, stripper, etc. seemed to not truly be motivated (for what? the coach wanting to recruit him...why wouldn't he?) and they are all piled in one scene...it is supposed to be wild and madcap but ultimately just seemed mean. It also seems outside his resources and way more effort than he would make since he didn't seem phased at all by the coach's efforts. Uma Thurman gets an introducing credit here, not sure if that is accurate. She is still not Michelle Pfeiffer, I always wonder about the love for her. She certainly can't butcher a chicken. She basically pulled it apart with her hands. Looked like she never wielded a knife before which leads me to a main problem in the movie. It needed more murder. However, she does have a ventriloquist dummy in her closet for some reason, so that's a character trait. George Hall (who was old Indiana Jones in the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and most importantly, in REMEMBER WENN) plays the grandpa. At first, I wasn't sure he was grandpa or dad and thought the Mom was rather open minded Marshall Bell (Uma's father) was in Total Recall as Kuato (spoiler on my part) - I like him as an actor, but there is no part here. All rage and fury and no intelligence or anything outside a caricature John Pankow, probably best known for Mad About You and possibly To Live and Die in LA, but I loved him in The Secret of My Success. He is solid, as always, but doesn't seem very LA...he's more of a New York vibe, which I learned is put on since he came from Chicago. I will say I kind of enjoyed the neon sign saying "Pharmacy" and "Steroids" on the wall in the locker room (and two black guys in a tanning bed) Jennifer Tilly is a welcome addition to the cast, that once again...totally wasted. Seymour Cassel, the president of Piermount, is a great character actor and again, completely wasted. The sound effects were awful. When the boys slap each other in the car, they used a full Arnold Schwarzenegger fist punch sound effect...sounds goofy and I think the director is primarily an editor so he should have noticed this mess. When Gleason meets Gramps at the fish shop, there is a sound effect of a crash for no reason, because they show his Pacer outside and no damage. Just idiotic. The coach at State, Steve James, did a lot of action movies, but I saw no evidence of football in his background...but he sure looks like he could Weird to get backup quarterback Jim McMahon and Howard Cosell in cameos here Early in the movie, everyone was timing hang time. Why is it hanging up there so good? Don't you just want the home run to go out into the stands? Music by John Astley was featured at one point which I liked. It wasn't Jane's Getting Serious, but it was a nice rest from the really crappy film I was being tortured with this week.

Comedy of the typical adolescent leader.

Comedy of the typical teenage leader.