All the Right Moves - Film Review

With autumn getting into full-swing, I thought I'd embrace the American tradition of watching football. Of course, I would never watch actual real football, but I feel like watching a movie about football is close enough. This movie has been sitting on my shelf for years (next do Dune, sadly), but I finally decided embrace my inner-quarterback and check this one out. 

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Where You Can Find It: I watched this on DVD, but it appears to be available to those with an HBO Start streaming service. This movie made me feel old when my DVD copy opened with an advertisement to "embrace the future" by watching more movies on DVD. I still remember thinking VHS was high-tech at one point...

General Information 
All the Right Moves is an American football drama film that was first released on 21 October 1983. It was directed by Michael Chapman and written by Michael Kane with 20th Century Fox distributing. As you can see from the film's poster, it stars Tom Cruise just as his career was hitting its peak, but also stars a ton of 1980s' regulars like Lea Thompson and Chris Penn. The film's reception has been relatively mediocre with a Metascore of 62. At the time of its release, it was frequently considered the male version of Flashdance, with a critic from TIME stating it was "cliché-riddled." I think I can agree with both claims, however I feel like the overwhelming majority of sports movies are full of clichés.

Something I saw while researching this film was that Lea Thompson was originally against starring in this film due to the two nudity scenes her role required. Tom Cruise was a class act in convincing her to stay on by convincing Michael Chapman to cut one of the scenes and demanding to be nude in the other scene with her in solidarity. Thompson was impressed with this and signed on. I don't blame her either, as I feel like Tom Cruise getting naked would convince most people to do most things.

The Story
Stefan Djordjevic (played by Tom Cruise) is an all-American high school boy with hopes of making it out of his old steel mill town of Ampipe, PA by earning a football scholarship. College scouts are coming to watch the next big game and he'll have his pick of colleges if he and his team can pull off a victory against the infamous Walnut Heights Knights. Something happens at the game, however, and it puts Djordjevic's prospects in jeopardy after he gets into an argument with Coach Nickerson (played by Craig T. Nelson) that gets him booted off the team.

There are a lot of themes about ambition and escape in this movie that I really liked. Everyone seems to be trying to escape from Ampipe as the town has clearly seen better days. Coach Nickerson is caught in a situation where even he is trying to leave as he's hoping to make it as a college football coach, while almost every football player is talking nearly exclusively about what colleges they're going to get into. I honestly found the story more interesting from Nickerson's point of view, as he struggled with abandoning his players for greener pastures. Due to this, a lot of the characters in this film are very human in their behavior, which is something I've always really appreciated.

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Lea Thompson's Lisa and Tom Cruise's Stefan

I do have to admit that I was a little annoyed with the reasoning behind Djordjevic's struggles in this film as I feel like the inciting incident was relatively minor (especially when put in comparison to how it started). This is somewhat later improved when Djordjevic begins to spiral out of control, but I found Nickerson's initial reaction to be far harsher than it should've been (which might be by design as Nickerson clearly has some ego and anger issues).

My last mention is how this movie essentially fails Djordjevic's girlfriend, Lisa Lietzke (played by Lea Thompson). Like the other characters in this movie, she's hoping to escape from Ampipe too, but her situation is a bit more dire as her hopes of getting a music scholarship are pretty non-existent. Things are even worse for her too as she's a junior, while Djordjevic is a senior, which means (if he gets a scholarship) he'll leave Ampipe and her behind. Without major spoilers, by the end of the film, her character essentially consigns herself to a dead-end job in Ampipe while Djordjevic chases his dreams. I nearly put my fist through the screen when Lisa explains her situation to Coach Nickerson's wife and the guidance she receives is basically the Nike motto of "just do it." How the hell is Lisa supposed to just study music without any financial or emotional support?

Special Effects/Atmosphere

When it comes to coming-of-age tales, the soundtrack is usually a big deal. Like Flashdance, this film rocks a soundtrack filled with custom-made songs, however none of them are all that particularly good. The main theme song for the movie (by Jennifer Warnes and Chris Thompson) is decent, but I was never all that impressed. Flashdance has "Maniac," Fast Times at Ridgemont High had "Somebody's Baby," and Breakfast Club had "Don't You" (just to name a few). This film just doesn't have anything like that, and it's disappointing as there were plenty of chances for solid tracks to enhance the actors' performances.

The setting is fantastically put together. In my research for this film, I saw that Michael Chapman used real small-town high schools in Pennsylvania to act as the set for much of the film. Beyond that, Chapman also had Cruise and Thompson go back to high school for a week to refresh themselves on the experience. Having spent my high school years in a small-town in America that (still) very much loves its football, I really felt like I was back in class again, so the nostalgia factor is definitely there.

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Apparently, even the uniforms were loaned out from the schools the movie was filmed at

The Acting
I generally liked Tom Cruise's performance in this film, although I wouldn't say that it contends with films he would later appear in, like A Few Good Men or Collateral. There were more than a few times in this movie that he really hit the mark for being a believable high school kid that's unsure of himself. One of the final scenes of the movie felt a tad too over-dramatic, but that might just be the director's choice.

I was particularly impressed with Craig T. Nelson's performance though. The way he jerks around his players by their facemasks, and his cool anger was really impressive. He's never over-the-top, and I genuinely think Nelson's performance made Coach Nickerson more relatable as opposed to what could've simply been an angry coach archetype.

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Quality coaching by Nickerson

I think Lea Thompson did a good job too with what she was given, however the sidelining of her character didn't give her as many chances to perform as Cruise did. I'm happy to say that she'd get plenty of more teen drama work later on with Back to the Future and Some Kind of Wonderful.

The Best of the Best: I really enjoyed the football match between the Walnut Heights Knights and the Ampipe Bulldogs. I wish real football was as interesting.

The Worst of the Worst: Lisa lamenting over the fact that she has no way to study music and the only guidance she gets is to simply "just study music." Thanks a lot, Mrs. Nickerson...

Calhooey Score: 5/10 - Average

Would I Recommend?

I think if you're a Tom Cruise fan, or if you're looking for a lesser-known football movie, this is a decent choice. I enjoyed this movie for what it is and that's even with the fact that I personally detest football.

Spoiler Comments

• I'm not sure what's more interesting about Shadow: that he publicly declares he wants to donate his penis to his girlfriend or that he really wants to go to West Virginia. No offense to West Virginia, but I'm curious why he chose that state above all others...
• Birth control, Brian. It's a thing.
• Okay, so let's talk about Salvucci. Coach is willing to kick the player that scored a touchdown in the hardest match of the year for back-talk, but has no issue keeping the guy that fumbled a hand-off that cost the team the game. I kind of think that Coach deserved to get garbage thrown on his lawn.
• Speaking of Coach's lawn though, where did Bosko and his boys find a rooster to hang after the game? Pennsylvania is a truly awesome and terrible place...
• I genuinely liked the scene with Coach struggling with whether to help Salvucci when he got arrested for armed robbery, but what exactly did Salvucci expect Coach to do? I guess Salvucci had no one else to stick up for him. Once again, I don't think a regular actor could've pulled that scene off as Coach Nickerson as well as Craig T. Nelson did. 
• This movie did not have enough Terry O'Quinn (he played the college guy offering Djordjevic a scholarship) or Dick Miller (he played some random school faculty member). 

References

(1) Amazon. (n.d.). All the Right Moves film cover image. Retrieved from: https://www.amazon.com/All-Right-Moves-Tom-Cruise/dp/B000GAKDAG.

(2) IMDB. (2020). Lisa and Stefan image. Pinterest. Retrieved from: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/305892999690950591/. 

(3) Ace Black Blog. (2016, July 31). Ampipe Bulldogs image. Blogger. Retrieved from: https://www.theaceblackblog.com/2016/07/movie-review-all-right-moves-1983.html.

(4) Tenor. (2016, December 27). Coach Nickerson gif. Retrieved from: https://tenor.com/view/all-the-right-moves-football-coach-tom-cruise-craig-nelson-gif-7433754.