Johnny Superstar

I'm surprised at the negativity. It's a great dumb comedy with a tiny bit of morality thrown in. The recruitment tactics may not be an exaggeration of reality - trying to schmooze the all-American QB.

How is it possible that Yes Man averages a 7 out of 10 and this movie is a 4.? Yes Man was barely watchable.

The cast was perfect and the movie probably wouldn't have worked without them. Robert Downey Jr.'s character is so disturbed and hilarious. It seems to be a carryover from his role in Back to School. Which is another great 80's comedy. Uma Thurman is so cute in one of her first acting roles. Paul Gleason plays is a-hole character to perfection.

Maybe I am just old enough to still love the John Hughes-style high school comedies of the 1980's. This isn't the best of breed, but definitely worth enjoying.

Honestly, this is probably one of the worst movies I've ever seen. It's certainly one of the least-competently made studio releases ever. There are entire scenes in this movie in which the sound is so poorly handled that you can barely hear what characters are saying. This isn't helped by Anthony Michael Hall's decision to mumble all of his lines. He seemed very unenthusiastic about this role--like he could barely work up the energy even to say the words.

There is a scene in the film in which Hall's character and some friends have an impromptu football game on his girlfriend's front lawn, against her father (who hates Hall for some reason that is never explained) and some other boobs, that is so badly edited that you simply cannot tell what is happening. Characters come in and out of that scene without rhyme or reason--continuity errors abound. There are also many scenes in which weird dialog was looped in during post-production to bridge awkward narrative gaps. This is a sure sign that the director didn't really know what he was doing, and just failed to capture footage that made sense on its own.

Also, Robert Downey, Jr. is unbelievably obnoxious in this movie. I mean really disgusting.

Johnny Walker (Anthony Michael Hall) is the star high school football quarterback and punter. Backup quarterback Leo Wiggins (Robert Downey Jr.) is his best friend that never gets into the game. Wayne Hisler (Paul Gleason) is the hated coach. They win the championship and Johnny is recruited by everybody. His girlfriend Georgia Elkans (Uma Thurman) wants him to follow her to State college for a solid education.

There are nobody to like in this movie. This is trying to be a comedy but it's not funny. This subject could allow for a dark gritty realistic tale of bad recruitment practices but it's so fake. The writing is nowhere near sharp enough. It's always fascinating to see a young star and this one has Uma Thurman. Hall isn't convincing or likable. Downey is mugging for the camera too much without getting any laughs. This is Bud S. Smith's one and only directing credit. There's a reason for that.

There is one good scene in this movie, and it's pretty good. Anthony Michael Hall has just been on a recruitment tour of private colleges who want to give him football scholarships and he has come back to his hometown to negotiate a deal with the athletic director of a public university. The interplay between the two, especially the unspoken lines, is done beautifully.

Other than that, this is a pretty standard (sub-standard) teen flick posing as a cautionary tale. I think this movie wanted to be a comedic version of "All the Right Moves", but didn't have the guts to tell a real story.

Just three years after "The Breakfast Club", this film reunites Michael Anthony Hall and Paul Gleason. It aims to achieve the irreverent humor of a film like "Stripes" combined with the titillation of "Porky's". Almost every character in this film is a caricature. You can tell a lot of people put a lot of work into this film, so where does it go wrong?

First, the film's primary story--about a football phenom who is unscrupulously recruited by every powerhouse program in the country--is a serious drag on the humor. There is nothing funny about the sacrifice of educational values to the football money machine.

Secondly, the film tries to include every standard feature of every youth comedy film--the clueless adults, the topless scenes, the humor centering on sex and alcohol--and in so doing, becomes a parody of itself.

I am deducting one point just for the colossal waste of talent.

Robert Downey Jr. is wasted here, playing the wacky sidekick. Uma Thurman's performance as the hometown girlfriend is lost in the silliness.

The entire film is predictable, sometimes cringe-worthy, and boring.

In a scene near the end of the film Hall, Downey and Thurman drive off in a convertible to begin their post-high school lives and there is a sense of what this film could have been: an interesting exploration of the lives of three kids who have issues to face and things to learn. It might even have been funny, too.