Dead Solid Perfect

Corinne has a small but highly memorable part as "Janie Rimmer", Randy Quaid's girlfriend. When challenged to go nude to the the hallway ice machine, she does so, in a slow, proud walk that shows off her incredible body. Ah, happy sigh.......

You take a big swing with a wood or metal or plastic mallet, a dimpled white ball goes speeding off. There is no one to catch it or try to take it away from you, or prevent you from retrieving it. You walk or ride at a leisurely pace to whack at it again. When you get close to the hole you give it a tiny whack until it falls in. You might get caught in a "trap" or a "hazard" or in the "rough" which to anything but a helpless paraplegic is none of these things.

So what makes it exciting? Money and girls! The latter are very good in this film--the rest, like watching paint dry.

The novel "Dead Solid Perfect", by esteemed sportswriter Dan Jenkins, created and perfected the golf novel in one fell swoop. This movie version will feel familiar if you've read the book; there are lots of situations and specific lines in the movie that are straight out of the book - but they are generally switched around to different spots in the story, or spoken by different characters. Even the names of characters from the book are changed, or in some cases, used for completely different characters in the movie - even the name of the main character is changed, from Kenny Lee Puckett to just Kenny Lee.

The movie also completely cuts out the backstory reminiscences about Kenny's youth in Fort Worth, though they might have been too much to include in a TV movie.

The movie is a pretty good '80s golf time capsule, and golfers who are old enough to remember this era will recognize the names of real-life pros whose names come up in conversation or appear on scoreboards in the film. On that basis alone the movie might be enjoyable - IF you haven't read the book.

It's hard to believe that Jenkins, even though he co-wrote the screenplay, could have been happy about the mess that was made of his book in its translation to the screen - I know I wasn't. I've read the book at least a dozen times; it's the reason I got interested in playing golf and eventually writing about golf myself, and it's disorienting and more than a little disappointing to see the story so scrambled up and watered down.

...not nearly as funny as the book. Why? Mainly because they had to clean the language and nearly everything else up from the book or the film would have been rated X. Dan Jenkins writes hilarious books but they tend to have a lot of cussin' in them. His use of the English language has a decided Texas tint to it and it is flat-dab funny! I love Jenkin's writing style. He's written several funny books, probably the most popular of which is Semi-Tough, which was also made into a film. However, it, too, fell short of the book. But that's a different review. This film is still pretty dang funny, so by all means watch it. But be sure to pick up the book!

The first time I saw this movie I was just a kid going into H.S.. I am now 32 and to remember the movie so well and that Randy Quaid was in it ( who at the time may have not been the most popular actor ). I think this is a testament to how great the film is. Back then I could not have been any more of a golf fan than I was at 2. This only supports my point of how great a performance Randy Quaid gave and how great the script was for this film. I believe it is a great tragedy that it is not available on DVD, especially considering how much garbage is available. For those who might care please re-release this film on DVD so that fans can enjoy the movie again and more people could have a great film like this available to them....