The Crane Pool Forum

High school wrestler encounters wandering tough-chick, sparks fly and hijinx ensue.



Watched this last night for the first time since seeing it new in the theater.

Cast is interesting
--Jake Ryan from 16 Candles as Kutch
--Forrest Whitaker as a wrestler
--The Sure Thing girl Daphne Zuniga as the newspaper edtior
--Dick Jones from Robocop as the Dad

Modine must've been about 25-26 when shooting this. Zuniga not much younger.

I thought this movie was better than most "brat pack" coming-of-age films. I didn't read the novel it was based on but you could sorta tell that was original.

--I didn't know Spokane had a busy downtown with hotels and taxis
--Weird that an 18-year-old student can hang out in a bar that his teacher is in and nobody raises an eyebrow.
--Sign of the times that confessing to not participating in a gangbang is a source of shame
--Fairly typical sports-movie ending but at least the opponent wasn't an over-the-top villain
--"It's not 6 minutes. It's what happens in them" (or something)
--Big 80s soundtrack with Madonna, Journey's brightly arranged "Only the Young," and "Lunatic Fringe" which became a wrestling-team anthem.

I never saw this film. Part of it may have been there seemed to be two different marketing campaigns, playing up the two different angles of the film. One was the romantic fantasy — "She's the girl of his dreams, and she lives ... in his house!" The other was the heroic underdog sports movie — "He needs to see what he's got ... inside."

You'd figure that the promise of sweaty young men in tights would have triggered a rental some evening from a girl I was with, but no dice. I had to get my Matthew Modine fix from Birdy.

He's a jock but he's not jocky, kinda goofy and immature, intelligent, his own man. You can root for him, he's not a classic hero.

His friend Kutch is all facade, and tragically so. I thought he was good.

My issue was the girl. She wasn't consistently played, swinging from bitchy tough chick to sensitive artist, and she didn't know whether to go for the 18 year old or the 34 year old but it wasn't like she was confused, she just wasn't following a linear path. Too much Pat Benatar not enough Susanna Hoffs

I saw this about a billion years ago.
Don't remember enough to render much of an opinion but my younger self was OK with it at the time IIRC

Johnny Lunchbucket wrote: ↑Fri Jan 17, 2025 11:39 am My issue was the girl. She wasn't consistently played, swinging from bitchy tough chick to sensitive artist, and she didn't know whether to go for the 18 year old or the 34 year old but it wasn't like she was confused, she just wasn't following a linear path.

What is the defining Linda Fiorentino film? It likely isn't this. It might be Gotcha! or Dogma but neither feels quite right. Men in Black was huge but she was sort of just there. It was, like, every time her career was getting any traction, she'd do another piece-of-crap movie with David Caruso and/or Joe Eszterhas and end up back where she started.

When I saw the thread title I thought this was Galaxy Quest - until I read the synopsis.
No vote. I haven't seen it and don't think I would want to.
Later