Word: chapman
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Much of the movie succeeds because of director Michael Chapman's willingness to confront seriously the social issues facing his characters. In fact, because he bravely tackles so many issues at once. All the Right Moves often seems more like a series of social statements than the story of an adolescent's struggle to escape the steel mill mentality...
...movie has other flaws, as well. Instead of developing issues like the ones posed by Cruise's girlfriend (Lea Thomson)--who attacks the barriers non-athletes encounter in getting beyond jobs at the local grocery store--Chapman repeatedly resorts to less dangerous, more predictable cheap sell tactics. A student's "getting off" in typing class to the amusement of his peers is one of several examples. Because director Chapman seems afraid to go completely beyond one level of sophomoric romance, All the Right Moves never quite reaches its potential...
More importantly, Chapman attempts to make everything work out neatly in the end, and as a result the final scene is highly anti-climactic. Instead of leaving the theatre unsettled and introspective, the audience wonders whether the film is principally a social commentary or an attempt to disguise conventional high school antics beneath a veneer of sincerity...
Directed by Michael Chapman...
...clichés. These teen-agers are good-looking kids with big dreams and a bright line of patter. The coach carries on like a sensitive drill sergeant, psyching his team into a football frenzy by using curses, inspirational locker-room speeches and the odd face-mask violation. Michael Chapman, who graduated to the director's chair with this film after making his name as the cinematographer of Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Personal Best, brings a virginal intensity to each hoary plot device. He hardly gives his audience time to realize that the football team is only...