breakdownthatfilm-blogspot-com Life lessons are not always the most prevalent in coming of age genre films. Sometimes they're real obvious, while others are more obscure and look to have their viewers find the deeper meaning themselves. It's also hard to say how significant a coming of age film can be when it is a Rated R comedy. Some have worked brilliantly - The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) is one. This on the other hand is a strange mix of elements that plays its cards right in some respects, while at other moments it's questionable to what the crew was thinking here. This is the story of Johnny Walker (Anthony Michael Hall), a high school athlete who has quite a fan club. After winning the last football game of the season (by cheating no less), Walker is approached by recruiter upon recruiter to play for their college team.There are also other people who want Johnny to go with their opinion. Wayne Hisler (Paul Gleason), the high school coach wants him to attend a college of his choice so he can acquire special benefits and he'll do anything to make sure it happens. Johnny's mom and grandpa want him to get an education more than a sports scholarship and his girlfriend Georgia (Uma Thurman) wants him to attend State with her. So many opinions, which one will he choose?! Well, Johnny ends up attending mostly all of their open houses. This ends up having him being bribed with things that seem almost unrealistic or things that have nothing to do with getting an education or playing football. Of course fame grants several of these things but at a high school level? The kid and his team didn't even play fairly winning the last game so how does that even qualify? Are the refs that blind?Plus, what's even more shocking is to how this production was able to gather now famous actors when they were starting off and the chemistry feels almost nonexistent. And, the screenplay was completed by three writers, all of which worked on Revenge of the Nerds (1984). How is that barely any charm are given to these characters? There are only a couple of moments that Johnny goes through that actually develop him as a character. Other than that he's placed in silly events that should trigger his conscience saying he shouldn't be there. The best parts of the film are when Johnny's family is on screen. Somehow they seem to have the best lines and character arcs. My favorite family member was the grandfather (George Hall). Such a nice old man.Uma Thurman's character has a very typical character arc, loves her boyfriend - finds him as a jerk briefly - then resorts back to him. Possibly the strangest of all is Robert Downey Jr.'s character. Either he tries too hard to be funny or his jokes don't make any sense. It's baffling, I guess Downey Jr. didn't realize how much funnier he is when he says his lines deadpan than actually trying to be comical. Fans might also get a kick out of actor Marshal Bell's performance as Uma Thurman's dad, also the chief of police. He has some funny one liners at times too. All right enough of the characters. Jay Ferguson's music to the film is appropriately set but doesn't have anything to remember about it. Was it a comedy that had laughs galore? Not so much. Does it feel like a coming of age movie? Not really.The cast contains famous actors of today in their youth and has a moral somewhere in its story but its delivery is overshadowed by hit and miss comedy. Much of the events that take place feel impossible too, decreasing its believability.

utahman1971 Its a little slapstick, but very good. Not perfect acting, but great movie. I have seen the Theater version PG-13, and the Video Rated R version. The theater one is just a cut scenes of the rated R version. It is about a high school quarterback that is very popular, and excellent at playing football in high school. He gets swamped of college recruiters trying to recruit him to play for them. It only shows him going to two colleges though.While he is ditching his high school coach of visiting the colleges that the coach wants to be hired on as a coach for that college, Johnny is visiting other colleges. Johnny finds out that the coach made a deal with a college without his knowledge, and Johnny gets back at him. I say people that don't like this are either younger than the time that it was release or old, and hate football movies. Either way why did you rent or buy it then if you don't like those kind of movies? It is your fault, not anyone else.I say watch this movie, but if your in those categories above said, then look elsewhere.

Gordon-11 This film is about various colleges doing unscrupulous acts in order to attract a talented American football player to study in their college."Johnny Be Good" has a bad plot and has poor acting. I normally like Uma Thurman, but her role in this is small and dispensable. There are so many implausible scenes which are so bad that they become funny. It is so bad that it becomes entertaining. For example, where did the well dressed cheerleaders come from in the spontaneous game in front of Georgia's house? And that flamboyant outfit Johnny goes home with is ridiculously bad. Leo Wiggins, played by Robert Downey Jr., has very little screen time, but he is memorable role in a bad way. He is so crazy that he is painful to look at.Maybe it was a good film by 80's standards, but watching it 20 years down the line, it has become an embarrassing joke.

Jordan_Haelend Well, I did it. I had heard about how bad this movie was and I went down to the Borders Books & Music and bought it. After having turned it on and shut it off on at least 10 successive occasions, I finally made it to the end tonight. You see, every time I fired it up I thought, "The rest of it can't possibly be as awful as the part I just watched. They can't possibly insult the viewer's intelligence any more than they have." The filmmakers proved me wrong each time.The script was clunky, the photography is badly framed and poorly shot, and much of the film just doesn't make any sense. Also, there isn't a single sequence the conclusion of which you can't see coming from a mile away- come on, of COURSE Johhny's "side" was going to win the impromptu football game when he has one hand shackled behind his back- and his girl is the prize! And Johnny Walker strutting down the Main street of his staid, middle-American town dressed like he's on his way to a Gay bar on Cowboy Night?! How ELSE would his straight-laced family react than with shock, indignation and disgust? As to the actors, Uma is lovely, Downey is Downey (and I admit is pretty good in his standard hopped-up sidekick role, especially in the motel scenes,) but Hall seems completely uninterested in what he's doing. He really acts as if he didn't really want to do this film, in spite of the fact that he DID want a vehicle that would break his Brat Pack Geek-in-Chief image. I felt sorry for him. He was really cute, but that was it. His character, Johnny Walker, speaks to a crowd of having embarrassed himself towards the end of the picture. To me, it seemed that Hall delivered those lines with utter conviction, and I'm not surprised. If this were on my resume, I'd deny it. Hall has, of course, gone on to a viable and even admirable career. I guess it's really true that you can't keep a good man down, even if he makes such a potentially suicidal career choice as this film. It's a testament to the man's drive and determination to succeed that he left trash like this far behind him and kept working.Another gripe I have: screenwriters Zacharias and Buhai wrote the original "Revenge of the Nerds," so they ought to have known what would work in a Youth comedy. Apparently they forgot.The two worst aspects of this film, however, were these: first, it was unbelievably boring (and a bad movie that is boring is the worst bad movie of all); secondly, the lampooning of corruption in collegiate football is a viable topic and it could have worked if the script had been decent, the story been told in a logically plotted arc, Bud Smith hadn't directed and Hall had acted like he cared (and not mumbled his lines as if he were auditioning for the first time at a Junior High School's offering of Romeo and Juliet.) I give this ludicrous waste of my time a 1.