All the Right Moves (1983)

good back-story, and good acting

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Please remember that a film doesn't have to be perfect, or even close, to be worthwhile. If it contains some interesting and memorable elements, than it has lasting value. Having said that, let me address this one, and refute some of the accusations of "cliché." Let's start with the setting. The opening sequence around town, and the football practice scenes, portray a combination of gritty urban reality and unrefined sylvan ambiance, with remarkable effectiveness. Interestingly, I don't necessarily think that living in a small, woodsy town, having close family and friends, and working with your hands, is such a terrible fate. If your mill closes down, there are other towns within commutable distance, to work in. What if this movie was set in the Spring? Maybe that part of the country is lovely in Spring. So we are shown the region with a slanted spin, as it is set in the Fall. I lived in a depressed logging town at about the time of this movie, but the difference is that it was totally isolated. Conversely, Ampipe, the town in this movie, is not far from Pittsburgh and its' suburbs. Nevertheless, I get the basic depressed vibe, and I'm sure it existed. Tom Cruise brought heart to this role. There's a scene where he is no longer the cocky jock, but rather simply a boy, in need of a mother, and seeking refuge in the reassuring arms of his father. What a uniquely gentle moment for a film about a high school football player. There was nothing cliché about it, and Cruise pulled it off with savvy. For the record, no one is "stuck" in any town in America. What about Junior College, what about just moving to a bigger town? So of course I don't buy the clichéd "stuck in this town without a way out" theme entirely. The gentility of the young couple's sex scene, where they lose their virginity is not clichéd. It is tasteful, sensitive, and totally believable. Tom Cruise's character looks a bit scared, in awe, and very conscious of the significance of the moment. Again, beautifully played. Lea Thompson is lovely in this film, and does a masterful job of portraying a teen in love. She sees that her boyfriend is self-centered, but she has the sixth sense of a small town girlfriend, that helps her see his the finer aspects of his character. We used to rely on real "girls" to provide balance in society, and bring out the best in a man. The music is simply great. "All The Right Moves," and "Blue Skies Forever," are 80s gems, and convey the optimism of a unique cultural time period. There are two apology scenes by men, that are done nicely, and with simple conviction. It's fresh to see men say they are sorry, and to really mean it. Cruise's best scene involves confronting his stubborn football coach in an alley and intermittently sprinting away, while throwing his hands up in confounded ire. Beautifully executed. He has talent, and perhaps should have pursued more gritty underdog roles than he has. What I loved best, was the portrayal of the mixture of hope, potential, vitality, sexuality, and angst that color one's last two years of high school. To be an upperclassman, athletic, in love, invincible, and free.

Actors are trying, but the director and writer appear to be going through the motions. Clichéd dialogue / story lines, and amped up dramatic background music (turn volume to 11!) do not a good movie make.People in this movie look overly self-conscious that they ARE in a movie, even background people (eyes shift nervously everywhere, BUT toward the camera, which made this viewer conscious that they were trying oh so hard to not look at the camera! very distracting!).Cliché, cliché, cliché... like being forced to watch Iron Eagle.. yuck.way too much like An Officer and a Gentleman in Pennsylvania!probably why this guy never directed another major movie after this and Clan of the Cave Bear (1986)...He and/or his bosses must have realized he was out of his element.

All the Right Moves begins with the triumphant synth rock melody of David Campbell's score accompanied by shots of grimy working class settings of train terminals and factories indicating that viewer is in store for a blue collar John Hughes films that has one foot in eighties cinema and the other still dipped in the obsessions with 70s New Hollywood. Tom Cruise is quite convincing as a working class jock while Lea Thompson as she only helps to bring up connotations of herself in Back to the Future and would seem more appropriate in a world of upper middle class WASPs like Growing Pains or Family Ties rather than the lurid Welcome Back Kotter universe of All the Right Moves. Perhaps Cruise needed a girlfriend who seemed a little sluttier but still had Thompson's vulnerability? Ally McSheedy? Chris Penn plays Cruise's less attractive jock pal and Craig T. Nelson establishes his typecast as a humourless coach and all three characters express similar desires very early in the film about 'moving on' and escaping their working class background. Knowing the direction that the manufacturing industry would take in the 80s this is probably an understandable goal. However, each character have obstacles preventing them from establishing that dream - some of which are intertwined. Lea Thompson contributes to this story by making Tom Cruise sexually frustrated during awkward love scenes. High school football is used as a metaphor for cooperating to exceed ones limits as detailed by Craig T. Nelson in a pre-game speech that would lead to him being fired if it were uttered today let alone ten years ago. It's at this point of the review, I wish to remind the viewer I have no idea how American Football works - all I know is people jump on each other and touchdown is a good thing. Anyway some play happens in the game that causes Cruise to be thrown off the team for disciplinary reasons and this all leads to a descent that includes being falsely framed for terrorising the neighbourhood and the last half hour of the film covers a number of other plot twists that occur from that one prior conflict along with a short resolution. With just under ninety minutes of run time All the Right Moves is a satisfyingly short rise and fall and rise story with an interesting mix of New Hollywood drama and the emerging 80s teen film genre.

I was about ready to log off on this movie by the end of the first half hour or so. A teen movie that takes it characters and values seriously. The coach of a high school football team, Craig Nelson, in western Pennsylvania must lead the team to victory to land a better job. Tom Cruise, the star of the team, needs to finish high school with an unblemished record in order to win a football scholarship to college and leave Ampipe. (That's the name of the industrial Appalachian town -- Ampipe, as in American Pipe and Steel Company.) Oh, there are all sorts of conflicts. The coach has no tolerance for failure. He calls it quitting. And he thinks in nominal scales -- you're either with the team or against it. And he really believes this crap. And Tom Cruise has an attitude problem. He loses his cool when he's angry and shouts impulsively when he should be keeping his mouth shut.Then there is Cruise's girl, Lea Thompson, a tiny thing who loves Cruise as much as he loves her. But they have a problem too. She believes that if Cruise leaves high school for a distant college, while she is still a junior with another year to go, she'll lose him to someone else. Further, she's envious of Cruise's chances of getting a football scholarship while she, a musician, has little such hope.I said the coach believes the stuff he shouts to the team in the locker room and he really does. He gives pep talks about quitters being losers and we're all in this together. The context of these scenes seems to encourage the audience to accept this adolescent nonsense. And when Cruise's father is in a bar and someone spits in his face that, "Your son cost us the game!", and the old man pops the impudent natterer in the nose, we are clearly meant to cheer the petty violence.But then, the second half of the movie, while still groveling in corn, gets a little more interesting. Some sympathy is extended to the coach -- I won't bother describing it in detail -- when his house is trashed. Cruise who was peripheral to the incident apologizes but the coach has him pegged as a quitter and fires him from the team, causing a blemish to appear on Cruise's heretofore spotless record, and jeopardizing his chances of being awarded the scholarship that will free him from the hellish community he's part of.And what a dreary place it is. The drizzly weather, the shabby wooden tenements, the Gothic woods, the dripping hills, hover over the whole movie like a leaden cloud. You can practically smell the dismal rooms and trailers. See "Slap Shot" or "Coal Miner's Daughter" for other examples. Give me the studio-built, fairy-tale Appalachia of Howard Hawks' "Sergeant York" any day.The performances are neither outstandingly bad or unusually good. Lea Thompson is appealing enough with her girlish voice. Tom Cruise still has that piping high-schoolish voice and spends a good deal of time standing around open mouthed. Craig Nelson has the kind of presence that ought to lend itself to high morality or terpitude but the default position of his features is a simple frown. He's never able to get past that frown.Enough. Everything in it is predictable, including the happy ending. The coach is offered a job at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo and offers Cruise a scholarship there. I don't know how a newly hired football coach can offer anybody a scholarship, but there it is. The old fixeroo is in. You know, I'm not sure whether the coach was hired at Cal Tech or Cal Poly. Can't remember exactly. I hope it was Cal Poly because the campus is situated in such a pretty area -- the coast of central California -- and they have a marvelously comprehensive library. I managed to locate a book of mine in the card catalogue. Yes, a nice place.