Tag Archives: bad movies

movies, nostalgia

Repost: My review of the 80s gymnastics film, American Anthem…

Here’s another repost. I originally wrote this movie review for Epinions.com on May 21, 2007. I am reposting it here for the sake of nostalgia. It appears here as/is.

American Anthem… What’s reality got to do with Hollywood?

Pros: Music video quality. Decent soundtrack. Nice shots of Gaylord in shorts. Mindless fun.

Cons: Incredibly stupid plot. Bad acting. May be hard to find.

Twenty years ago, I was a devoted cable TV fan who had just discovered gymnastics. No, I’ve never been one to turn a cartwheel myself (having big jugs makes acrobatics difficult), but I do enjoy watching the sport. In 1986, the U.S. men’s gymnastics team was still basking in the glory of their team gold medal at the 1984 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Hunky Olympic gymnast Mitch Gaylord apparently wanted to cash in on his new found fame and good looks. Perhaps he also wanted to get out of the gym.

I don’t know the real reasons behind his decision to make the 1986 flop American Anthem and try his hand at acting, but the regrettable fact remains that Gaylord does have American Anthem on his resume. Yesterday, I had the chance to view it again, courtesy of Amazon.com’s new Unbox service.

Let me be frank. When I was a teenager, I loved this movie. It used to come on HBO all the time and I never got tired of watching it. Now that I’m in my 30s (um… 50), this movie is not as enchanting. In fact, I’m pretty embarrassed to even count this flick as a guilty pleasure.

Anyway, Mitch Gaylord plays Steve Tevere, a former high school football star turned gymnast turned sports burnout. Steve Tevere lives with his parents, played by Michelle Phillips and John Aprea, and his little brother, Mikey, played by R.J. Williams, and works at the local motorcycle factory. Although at the beginning of the film, ol’ Steve has given up his dreams of gymnastics glory, he still hangs out with his athlete buddies and sneaks into the gym to watch them work out. And that’s when he catches sight of the babelicious newcomer to the gym, Julie Lloyd, played by dancer, Janet Jones (future wife of hockey star, Wayne Gretzky).

Julie Lloyd moved to the gym against her parents’ will to train with the demanding Coach Soranhoff, played by Michael Pataki. She quickly makes friends with a hardworking but less sexy gymnast named Becky Cameron, played by former University of Florida gymnast Maria Anz. When Julie and Becky go out for some good times at the local bar, they run into Steve, who immediately hits on Julie. Julie and Steve predictably hook up, which leads Steve to consider going back to gymnastics. After getting a lecture from his friend, Kirk Baker, played by Stacy Maloney, Steve decides to go back to the gym. His father is against his decision, leading them to fight.

There’s a third plot in this story. Julie’s disabled cousin Arthur, played by Andrea Bianchi, also happens to live in the same town as the gym. Arthur lost his parents in a car crash and was left with a leg brace. He spends his time holed up in a house, composing music on his synthesizer. Julie pays him a visit and establishes his role in the film.

Both Julie and Steve are headstrong athletes dealing with personal conflicts. Steve struggles with a fear of not living up to his past successes. He’s unhappy as a clearly mature man, living with his parents and working at a dead end job. And Julie doesn’t like her floor exercise music. If I could, I’d insert an eyeroll smiley right here. Since I don’t have access to smilies, I will just repeat myself in italics. Julie’s conflict is that she doesn’t like her coach’s choice in music for her floor exercise routine. After listening to and watching Julie’s routine, I can’t say I blame her. The flatulent sounding piece sounds like it was an early inspiration for the Who Framed Roger Rabbit soundtrack.

Anyway, Julie would rather use a dynamic, snazzy piece composed by her disabled cousin, Arthur. The coach won’t hear of it, so Julie gets an attitude at a regional meet, which upsets her teammate, Becky Cameron. The movie plods on with Steve on the outs with his parents– especially his father– and Julie on the outs with the coach and her high achieving teammate. Arthur hangs out on the sidelines, pressuring Julie to use his music instead of the beastly number the coach has chosen.

At this point, I’ll just say that naturally, Steve and Julie work through their issues to become triumphant at the movie’s splashy gymnastics meet finale. They also make progress in healing their personal rifts with family. Incidentally, I always get a kick out of the final gymnastics meet, meant to choose the U.S. gymnastics team. I read that the scene was filmed in the gym of an abandoned high school. The overall lighting is kept low, with dramatic colored lights very obviously displayed. It looks more like the Ice Capades than an actual gymnastics meet. Watch gymnastics on ESPN someday and you’ll see that the lighting in real meets is kept very bright. But then again, these are the movies. What’s reality got to do with Hollywood?

American Anthem is a pretty stupid movie. For one thing, Janet Jones and Mitch Gaylord were way too old for their parts. Most serious female gymnasts are in their early to late teens with a few managing to hang on in their 20s. In 1986, Janet Jones was 25 years old. Although she was thin and had a beautiful dancer’s body, she certainly didn’t have a gymnast’s body. Successful gymnasts tend to be very small, flat-chested, and childlike. Make no mistake, Janet Jones did not look like a child in this movie. Male gymnasts tend to be a bit older, but the way this story is presented, it looks like Steve Tevere is supposed to be several years younger than the 25 year old man Mitch Gaylord was at the time.

For another thing, Julie and Steve are shown spending a lot of time having fun. Steve, in particular, seems to spend all his spare time smoking Marlboros and drinking beer. Julie hangs out with her disabled cousin, coming up with a new floor exercise routine with the music he composed for her. Again, it’s unrealistic. Serious gymnasts spend most of their time at the gym. They don’t have time for fooling around. There’s only one realistic looking gymnast in this film and that’s 12 year old Jenny Ester, who played Tracy Prescott. Jenny Ester was an actual top level gymnast in the 1980s.

The acting is laughable, too. The only character in this film whose acting really impressed me was R.J. Williams’, who was eight years old when this flick was made. I thought he did a fantastic job considering the material he had to work with. Everybody else delivered their lines with all the personality of an empty pizza box.

The one thing that does stick out about this film is that it looks like a music video. Famed Hollywood composer Alan Silvestri scored the film and several rock stars, including John Parr, Graham Nash, Andy Taylor (of Duran Duran), and Mr. Mister all contribute tracks. The music is non-stop throughout this film, along with plenty of cinematic photography. It shouldn’t be surprising that this movie looks like a music video, since it was directed by Albert Magnoli, who also directed Prince’s film debut, Purple Rain. Purple Rain is another 80s guilty pleasure for me, but like American Anthem, it’s not long on great acting.

Filthy language is at a bare minimum in American Anthem. The flick is rated PG-13 and I only heard the F-bomb dropped once. But this movie runs for an hour and 40 minutes and unfortunately, the time is mostly filled with boring dialog, 80s music, and sexy guys and girls in leotards. The gymnastics are kind of fun to watch, but they look pretty dated nowadays. It’s also pretty obvious that whoever did Janet Jones’ gymnastics stunts was quite a bit shorter than Jones.

Watching American Anthem is probably not the greatest use of your time. In fact, it amazes me that this movie actually had a short run in movie theaters. I recall that it was on video in record time. However, people must have liked it since it seems that a DVD release may be coming in the near future. Of course, you can download it off Amazon.com for $9.99 or buy the videocassette for an arm and a leg. Unless you really love gymnastics or have a unique fondness for movies that are so bad they’re good, I’d recommend skipping American Anthem.

As an Amazon Associate, I get a small commission from Amazon on sales made through my site.

Standard
music, musings, silliness

The dark days of winter…

I decided to take a “mental health day” yesterday. It was cold and rainy, and I just didn’t feel like doing much of anything. I spent a few minutes fiddling with my guitar, but didn’t do any lessons.

I watched two mindless made for TV movies from the 1990s– Saved By The Bell Hawaiian Style and Saved By The Bell Wedding in Vegas. I had seen both films before and didn’t really like either of them, but since I’ve been hearing so much about the Saved By The Bell reboot on Peacock, I decided I should have the complete set from the original series. I never actually watched that show when it was current, as I was a bit old for it during its original run. I got hooked on it in college, thanks to some of my male friends who thought Tiffani Thiessen was “hot”. I can’t watch Peacock unless I use a VPN, but I’m sure it will eventually be made available. What can I say? I like lowbrow television shows.

One thing I noticed as I watched both crappy movies is that most sitcoms probably shouldn’t be turned into movies. The Saved By The Bell movies were especially bad. When you’re watching a show that is filmed on a soundstage and has a laugh track, it’s easy to suspend disbelief and just go along with the goofy shit. Dustin Diamond’s “Screech” dorkiness was especially irritating when presented on location. His schtick really needs a laugh track because he’s not actually very funny. Without it, he just looks asinine, and not in a funny way. But then, I suppose that would be true for almost everyone on that show.

I also didn’t feel much like writing yesterday. There was nothing on my mind that was earth shattering enough to sit down and write. I thought that if I started writing something, it would be more of the same shit I’ve been writing for the past year. So I took a day off, and tried to wade through my latest book project, John Bolton’s The Room Where It Happened. I used to be able to breeze through books with ease, but it’s not so easy now that I’m older, especially when I’m not enjoying the reading material.

Bolton is a bit impressed with himself and I don’t find his writing that compelling. Consequently, although I’ve been reading for a couple of weeks, I’m only about 20% in… and I’m doing a lot of skimming. I confess that I’m also pretty tired of Donald Trump as a whole, and this may be the last book I read about him and his presidency for awhile. I am determined to finish it, though, because I don’t like to quit books I’ve started reading, even if they’re not good. I’ve only done that a few times in my life, and I often feel a tinge of regret whenever I do. Or, at least I’ve only done that with books I’ve had to read voluntarily… books for school are another matter. 😉

This morning, I had higher hopes for productivity, but I slept a bit later than usual. I am usually up at 5:30am, thanks to Bill, who is a chronic early bird and always wakes me up. Today, I slept until 6:20, which felt really late to me. I got up and cleaned the bathrooms, then had coffee and an egg. Since my mouse needed to recharge, I decided to change the strings on my Fender acoustic guitar. It’s probably been a couple of months since I last changed them, so they were definitely due. I play almost every day, though not for long periods of time.

Anyway, I managed to change string #6. String #5 ended up breaking just when it was at about the right pitch. I have extra strings for all of the other strings except #5. So I put that guitar aside and ordered two packs of new steel strings. Then I played with my classical guitar with nylon strings, which I don’t mess with as often. I need to change the strings on that guitar, too, but like I said, I rarely play it, and changing the strings is a pain in the ass.

After a few minutes spent fumbling with my classical guitar, I took the dogs for a walk. There was a guy out there with a leaf blower, which was freaking out Noyzi, so we went a different route. It was uneventful and the dogs were glad to get their stroll, since they didn’t get one yesterday.

Bill is teleworking this morning, but has to go into the office this afternoon. I decided the dogs would get their walk early so I would be home to collect all of the packages I’m expecting today, to include another guitar that I bought myself for Christmas. It’s a very expensive one, and I probably shouldn’t be fooling with it yet, but I couldn’t resist. And since we can’t travel, I had money to defray the big credit card charge. So I ordered myself a Fender Acoustasonic, only I didn’t go for the basic one… I bought one made with exotic wood, which supposedly is pretty hardcore and not expected to appeal to people like me.

I think the pandemic is getting to me, but what the hell. You only live once, and I’m probably at the right age for a mid life crisis. The acoustasonic can be played with or without an amp– it can be used as an electric instrument or an acoustic one. It’s basically an electric guitar with a hollow inside, although if you want to play for others, it’s probably best to plug it in. Today’s featured photo is of the guitar I ordered.

Bill is getting me an amp for Christmas. He will probably buy a new electric guitar for himself before too long. Last night, he showed me the one he wanted. It costs less than half of the one I just bought. Then he showed me one that was half of the price of the one he wants, which he says would be better for him because he’s not a good player yet. I laughed and told him he should just get the guitar he wants, as long as he can afford it. He’s 56 years old and has spent many years being deprived of the good things… and like I said, I am in support of indulging the good old fashioned mid life crisis, just as long as it doesn’t involve any sexually transmitted infections. I figure he could buy the cheaper guitar, but chances are good that he’d rather have the one he’s got his eye on and will eventually pull the trigger anyway. I did advise him to wait a bit, though, because he’s not been able to practice as much as I do and should probably gain a little bit more basic skill. But yeah– what matters most is wanting to play, and if a 1500 euro guitar speaks to him, who am I to disagree that he should have it?

I’m hoping the new guitar will give me something to focus on besides the news, particularly politics and COVID-19. I definitely need more practice in any case.

I’m also expecting about twelve bottles of wine to show up today. So it should be a fun afternoon, even if the morning got off on a bad note. Maybe tomorrow, I’ll be ready to write something more compelling than this.

Standard