Recensioni degli utenti

What can I remember about "One on One". I was like 10 years old. I think I saw it as a double-feature with another sports movie called "Take Down". That is when double-features existed and they usually had movies with similar themes. Anyhow, One on One is a pretty cool movie for anybody, let alone those who love basketball. I remember Robby Benson going to college and he is literally dwarfed by some of the other players. The center was 7'4", his new friend was like 6'6" and little Robby is only 5'11". But he still can dazzle us with his ball handling and great outside shots. He falls in love with a nice Freshman and the relationship is very sweet and tame. I think they may have kissed twice, one being just a simple short kiss. This is your typical underdog story told in a sport's theme while giving the audience the allure of young adults learning about life and love. The closing song and montage is also nice and reminiscent of the 70's.

How many popular teen heartthrob actors co-wrote a sports movie script about college basketball with their Dad, got the lead role in the movie and is so good at basketball that he doesn't need a double? The answer is probably only one and that was Robby Benson.

Robby stars as a short (5' 11" is short by basketball standards) but fast and feisty high school wunderkind called Henry Steele from a small town in Colorado who scores a full ride scholarship to Western University in LA replete with all the excess inducements like a sports car, sellable tickets and cash in an era before stricter NCAA enforcement. Henry arrives to start his freshmen season with the kind of doe-eyed innocence and gentle down home naïveté that characterized a number of roles Benson had previously played. Pretty soon he's thrown in the deep end of the seedier side of college professional sport including bribes, corruption, sexual favors, coach bullying, performance enhancing drugs and wild parties.

The WU Coach Smith is played brilliantly by GD Spradlen who is an amalgam of every hard assed demanding sports coach imaginable. He reacts negatively to Henry's hot dogging playing style and tries to force him to give up his scholarship. Here Benson assumes a familiar coming-of-age gritty determination that was a feature in many of the more than half dozen roles he played as a teenager as he refuses to be broken by the coaches. At first Benson's baby face looks and height well shorter than his fellow players means he looks like literally a boy amongst men (despite being 20 when the movie was filmed) but Benson's never-say-die attitude and his obvious intense athleticism gives an edge of realism to the intensity of the college basketball scenes and the realities of the bullying he faced.

The budding romance between Henry and his senior aged tutor Janet (ably played by Annette O'Toole) gives the movie a very touching and sweet counterbalance to the coaches' attempts to drive Henry out. At first Henry seems destined to be a typical jock in Janet's eyes but quickly he proves to be a more genuine scholar than Janet is used thus gradually endearing him to her. One of the movie's best acted scenes is a tutoring session in the presence of Janet's current professor boyfriend, an anti sport cynic, where Henry not only won't take the jock stereotyping lying down but he almost comes to blows with the man who held thrall over the woman he is falling for. His feisty determination to stand his ground leads Janet to dump the professor for her eager, younger pupil.

One on One also offers a real blast down a 1970's memory lane with tight flared pants, huge collars on flowery shirts and basketball shorts that were SHORT. Final bits of trivia: 19 year old Melanie Griffith makes an endearing cameo appearance and this movie was the first of three sporting movies Benson starred in, all with pretty demanding physical roles but throughout these roles, he nursed a shortness of breath due to a faulty aortic heart value eventually necessitating open heart surgery undertaken in his late 20's that effectively ended Benson's storied career in front of the camera.

Perfect? No. Rewatchable? Yes. I liked the movie when it came out and I can still watch it. Sure, Steele makes some bonehead mistakes and reacts to things awkwardly like a young inexperienced noob. I felt like this when I first joined the football team, some of those players were men! Yeah, I got head butted by a samoan during non-contact practice but I learned from that and dodged him the next time he came around but my inexperienced noob friend Gary wasn't as lucky as he got jacked off the ground by the same guy. Yeah, I blew it on a few girls when I didn't know what to do with them in my younger days. These are all why I feel this movie is real to me. Of course, the coach bloodying Steele's face is overdone but I remember my first coach calling me by the wrong name and showing a little disrespect. Steele's roommate reminds me of my friend George Devaney, who helped me while I was trying to make the team (No he didn't give me drugs). He ended up starting while I quit (but I ended up starting both ways the next year elsewhere). This movie hits close to home for me. And didn't we all just hate that snooty hippie and enjoy it as Steele finally stood up to him. Some of the lines in this movie are corny but that's how the 70s were. "Justice" by Seales and Croft adds some nice emotion to the film. BTW, in Spike Lee's opinion this is the worst sport movie ever. Spike who? I've seen much worse.

......Young, naive kid comes from the sticks to make it in the world of big-college basketball, encounters a Bobby Knight-type tyrannical coach, gets his ego stroked however by a caring teacher (tutor) and that carries him through to where one day, when the starting guard goes down with an injury, he gets his chance and turns into Magic Johnson/Larry Bird....and then tells the coach where to stick it......

As writer Dave Barry used to say, "I am not making this up."

Here is another example of movie I re-watched on tape in the mid 1990s and wondered, "How could I have liked this film so much when it came out?" That was then, and now is now. Yes, one tends to be far less discerning when one is younger, but some movies also get dated in a hurry. This is one of them. Actually, actor Robby Benson is another. He was a hot commodity in the '70s but faded fast.

However, despite having said all of the above, this movie IS fun to watch.

Good acting (and ballplaying) by Benson as college student-athlete "Henry Steele" and G.D. Spradlin as hard-nosed basketball coach "Moreland Smith" set up some intense confrontations in this sports movie, another gritty one from the era.

Benson also was a hot actor in this decade, and he's convincing in this role. He usually played interesting characters, as did Spradlin, who was always effective as a villain. By the way, don't buy the Hollywood cliché that every sports coach is tyrannical maniac. In college basketball, ask the players at UCLA who played under John Wooden, or the cagers at Duke under "Coach K," or hundreds of other places. Most coaches are NOT Bobby Knight, as portrayed here. This character is over-the-top, big-time.

Anyway, this film is so engulfed with movie clichés like the above that you could easily drown in them. Everything is so predictable, such a cliché that it is embarrassing to watch this at times, although it is entertaining and must be given points for that. You know things will work out for "Henry Steele." It's how they do that get a bit irritating, and Henry's attitude isn't always admirable, either. Boy, do they manipulate you, however, in this film! You HAVE to root for the kid, even if he is a hot dog on the court.

Overall: this film will keep you involved, but don't believe anything in this story.

One on One is the kind of film that infuriates me every time I see it. There is much of it that is very good and highly watchable. Unfortunately, there's also a good portion of it lousy enough that it makes a certain aspect of this film darn near intolerable.

The premise of the story is intriguing enough. Small town and small of stature basketball player Henry Steele (Robby Benson) has spent most of his life doing nothing but practicing and playing basketball (sort of a white Michael Jordan with hair). He is recruited by Coach Moreland Smith (G.D. Spradlin) to play basketball for Western University (think UCLA) and Henry accepts. Since Henry is from a small rural school he is totally unprepared for what awaits him in college. The players are much bigger of course, the practices are ten times tougher and he has no clue even as to what his classes will be. Some of the best scenes in One on One are watching Henry overcoming his naiveness as he learns what being a college jock is about. In order to make sure that he keeps his grades up he is also sent to be tutored by Janet Hays (Annette O'Toole). Unfortunately for Henry, Janet also hates jocks, a fact that Henry quickly finds out on his first day of tutoring. Henry may be a naive jock, but he is not dumb and uses Janet's degrading put downs of a jock's ability to learn as incentive to prove her wrong. However, the more he studies, the more Henry has trouble coping with playing college basketball and it isn't long before Coach Smith asks him to renounce his scholarship.

OK, first I'll give you the good: Robby Benson gives a solid performance as the naive country-bumpkin basketball superstar. I don't have a clue as to how much basketball he actually played in his life but in this film he certainly looks as if he could step right out onto a basketball court and begin wowing the folks. Although he does take some favors such as a car for going to the university, Benson is able to convince us that he is simply too callow to understand the ramifications of receiving cars, trading tickets to alumni for cash, and working a job that requires no work.. That's why we are able to root for Henry.

Then there's the love story that develops between Henry and Janet. As Henry works to gains Janet's respect, we see her attitude change from one of disdain, to caring about Henry and eventually love. The fact that we can believe in the love story is due in no small measure to Annette O'Toole's Janet. She gives her character enough depth that we are able to see that Janet is not above learning a few things about people and how not to judge everyone as a group. When her boyfriend is ridiculing Henry, we almost sense the shame she feels from having done the same thing earlier in the film. It is this love story that is perhaps the best thing about One on One and darn it, if they had just made the movie more about that they would have been on safe ground.

Of course I could stop here with the review and spare you the pain of the bad but why should I suffer alone? Any film worth its salt will try and manipulate its audience in some fashion another. The really good ones do it in a either a subtle way that we don't know how much we are being manipulated, or do it in a manner in which we may realize we are being manipulated but we don't care. Then there are films like One on One that are so heavy-handed in its attempt to manipulate our emotions, that it ends up turning us off by doing the blatantly obvious.

If ever there was the epitome of a wicked evil college coach, it's Spradlin's Coach Smith. It doesn't take us too long to realize his character is way over the top. It's as if writers Benson and Segal made him a composite caricature of the absolute worst coaches to grace a basketball court and his basketball program is equally despicable. Coach Smith would make Bobby Knight appear saintly by comparison. For instance, after having personally recruited Henry and signing him, Smith doesn't even remember who he is when he shows up at his office. Players are given good paying jobs for doing nothing. College classes are re-routed so players can go to practice instead of taking exams. Players are given oodles of money by alumni. I have no doubt that some of these things go on in some college sports program, but if they did it as obvious and as much as Smith does, they would be on NCAA probation for decades. Later when Henry doesn't appear to be making the grade, Spradlin resorts to physical torture to try and get Henry to renounce his scholarship, and does it in front of the other players. From what we are told this isn't the first time that has happened but One on One would have us believe it's a common occurrence for Coach Smith. Would a coach who sanctions so much rule breaking actually insist on a player renouncing his scholarship and take the chance that a recruit would head right to the NCAA and have a true confession? All of these shenanigans are from a coach who expects to have an undefeated season. I don't blame Spradlin as his portrayal of Smith is what the script and character requires him to do. If Benson and Segal had toned this aspect down quite a bit, it would have made for a much better film simply because it might have been more believable. Instead they just about kill it by making Smith appear to be Satan in a jacket and tie.

My advice is to watch as Henry learns his way around college, watch the scenes between O'Toole and Benson, and concentrate on the growing love story between them and some of the other humorous scenes that deal with Henry's naiveté and growth as a person. As for the rest of the story, that's when you get up and make yourself a sandwich.

My grade: C+

G. D. Spradlin is a splendid actor. Between his role as the coach here, and in the same role in the great football flick, "North Dallas Forty" - he has undoubtedly won, hands-down, the prize for the best portrayal of the quintessential "total horse's-ass coach." As others have pointed-out, it is illogical that he would recruit Henry (Robby Benson) as heavily as he did, then not know who he was when he reports on campus. Also, he knew Henry was a small-school, small-in-stature, fast-break player, whose talents were speed, ball handling and shooting - and yet, he is non-plussed when this doesn't seem to fit with his slower, ball control, "big-team" offensive philosophy.

The gratuities furnished Henry (automobile, do-nothing job, alum booster buying his game tickets for exorbitant amount) are beyond the scope even the most "liberal" programs would furnish - at least in terms of their obviousness, with little intent to provide some sense of legitimacy to them. And the coach's decision regarding Henry's scholarship, and his measures to try to drive him off the team, are over-the-top, even for the heavy-handed character portrayed (and even bearing in mind that big-time college athletic programs are not as altruistic as the schools like to portray).

But these contrivances are also what make the movie more interesting, and sometimes characterizations which are exaggerated help as much as they hinder the plot - and they do so here. I remember seeing Burt Reynolds with Johnny Carson on a show, discussing a movie in which Benson had appeared with him. He laughed about winning bets from others when Benson was able to do 100 sit-ups in about a minute. With some of the performances in sports movies, where the principals can be made to look like they can perform only by using trick photography or stunt doubles - it is a pleasure to watch Benson, who obviously is physically capable, and knows how to handle, pass and shoot a basketball. Annette O'Toole is engaging in the female lead, and together they make an attractive, appealing young couple.

Naive Henry Steele (Robby Benson) is a basketball star player at his small Colorado high school. He gets a 4 year basketball scholarship at Western University in L.A. Janet Hays (Annette O'Toole) is hired as his tutor. He gets a job without any actual work. The alumni pays big bucks for his complimentary tickets. However, he doesn't fit the coach's style and everybody is much better than the players at home. The coach is furious with sinking $150k on the kid and asks him to surrender his scholarship but he refuses.

First thing, a young Melanie Griffith has a small interesting role early in the movie. Robby Benson has enough charisma to lead but the biggest drawback is that he looks like a boy among men. I fear for his basketball skills. With passable moves and some movie magic, he plays almost believable college ball. The plot touches upon many of the darker aspects of college sports although it's not too deep. The ending has an abrupt turn which doesn't really fit. There are some good attempts at tackling college sports but it doesn't have the real edginess.

during the game in which "Western" is blowing out the visitors, the camera pans the crowd, who look bored. I was picked to be one of the "early leavers" and I think it's because I coincidentally (I didn't know what the mythical U would be called) was wearing my WESTERN track shirt.

Also amusing, is that the crowd shots for the games were shot at CSU (Ft. Collins, Colorado) basketball auditorium in the winter. Since we were supposed to be in sunny southern California, we had to HIDE all our winter clothing -- hats, scarves, gloves, parkas. Quite a feat to get all the thousands in attendance to hide all that stuff.

If it wasn't for "Hoosiers", I would have to say that "One on One" would be my favorite basketball movie of all time. In fairness, I am partial to movies where the actor playing an athlete can actually perform as one. You would be hard pressed to find a real actor(I'm not talking about the cast of "Space Jam") who displayed as much basketball skill as Robby Benson does in this movie. The dude can flat out play.

I am not giving a backhanded compliment when I say that G.D. Spradlin does an outstanding job of portraying an a$$hole coach. He gives virtually the same performance as he did in "North Dallas Forty". His attempts to crush Henry seem harsh but believable given the power and ego that some of these big time coaches possess. Annette O'Toole does a good job although watching the movie again with my son, I forgot how much of a love story this film is as well.

Realistic basketball play and a true underdog theme make this movie a good one for me. Certainly a little dated but hardly irrelevant, I would say watch this movie with your young athlete. It is finally available on DVD and worth the $12 I paid for it.

I can very clearly remember watching One on One in the movie theater as a young high school athlete and just loving it. Robbie Benson was such a nice, and likeable guy who tried so hard to play great ball and still be a good and kind person. I was really blown away on that first viewing. Having recently revisited the film I can still manage to see and understand why someone like me, at that stage of my life was so impacted by this film, but at the same time and with some age and wisdom I can now see the many cliches, flaws, and predictability of it all. One thing still works though and it's Robbie Benson and the fact that his performance still holds up. Sure, One on One has its shaw of flaws but its still watchable sports film after all these years.

Henry Steele grows up playing basketball in small town USA, doing well at his high school he is soon signed by a college. There he enjoys easy money and special treatment in many ways. However when he begins to fall for Janet, who is teaching him extra classes, he loses his focus on the basketball. This causes his coach to regret his pick and ask Henry to resign his scholarship. When Henry refuses it begins a war of attrition between the two.

At heart this is a tale of a little guy who overcomes obstacles in his attempt to do well in life and in sport. When I taped it all I knew was that it was a basketball movie, so I thought I'd give it a try. At the start I thought it was going to be all innocent as opposed to sports movies now that focus on the real side of it as well as the game (Any Given Sunday, Blue Chips etc), however this had layers of brutality, drugs, money being `given' to students etc. The story at core is one of Henry battling against his coach and it is quite good, but the added layers add more too.

It may never be excellent but it is better than expected and was quite enjoyable (even if the basketball is played at a bit slower pace than now!). Benson is a bit too innocent and whiney at times as Steele but once you get used to him it's ok – he also co-wrote, not bad for a 21 year old! O'Toole is OK but isn't really anything other than a device for moving the plot on. Spradlin is good – but for the first 20 minutes I could hear his voice giving better lines in a better film – it bugged me until I placed him in Apocalypse Now. An almost unrecognisably young Melanie Griffith makes a brief appearance – but overall the cast is good enough to keep this just above the level of a TVM.

Overall it may seem a little naive compared to modern college sports films but it's actually quite enjoyable, even if it won't change your life!

I saw this movie the year it came out, and loved it. It was a great "underdog prevails" story, but the romance was what gave it its warmth and charm. It was sort of in the same style as "Vision Quest", which came nearly a decade later. The soundtrack was wonderful too.

However, I re-rented it in 2006, and it was so dated...it was really corny and funny. It's true that it was a timely topic in the late 70's when athletes were offered ridiculously extravagant packages to entice them to play for certain colleges. Now, not so much...

Still, even after all these years, corny or not, it is a charming movie.

Even for the wild west show of college basketball during the early 1970's, the basic plot lines of this movie are over-the-top. The NCAA would come down heavy on any program that organized methods for players to sell their complimentary tickets, or for an athletic department to arrange jobs for the players. Actual college players could have only dreamed of such cushy arraignments. Add in a "free" car arraigned for a recruit's father to gift a player, and the illogical setup was so obvious. No coach would have dared try it.

The idea that a coach would ask a player to renounce his scholarship did happen, but the manner in which it is set up here just doesn't square. In this case, a player is asked to do so not even halfway into his freshman season. For one thing, the school doesn't automatically gain a scholarship for that season, and so that sort of "request" is reserved for after the season is over. Renouncing a scholarship during the season doesn't save any money, and just leaves the bench thin. It's self-destructive to the team.

Worse, the coach is then portrayed as a tyrant when the player doesn't agree, encouraging players to bully him in submission, a situation that would destroy a team's chemistry. Efforts to fully reveal the coach as an evil influence are completed with multiple examples of racism.

Nevertheless, the actors all turn in strong performances that tend to overcome these obvious plot holes, and so on the level of teen movies, this one is better than average. Still, with a more plausible script, the drama could still have been reached, and with the acting delivered, this could have been so much better.

This was the first Robbie Benson I ever saw. Once I did see it, I have always been alert for other things which involved his talents.

This movie was especially meaningful to me because I took a much younger friend to view it with me. After seeing the movie I bought the fabulous movie soundtrack album by Seals and Crofts, and those songs were played over and over by this young friend and I until every word and note could be sung-along with the artists. I think this experience was an inspirational time for both myself and my young friend, who could identify in many ways with Benson's character.

Decades later I find that few fans of Seals and Crofts even know they recorded such a soundtrack, much less having any familiarity with the movie One On One. However, I have always since sought-out other features and appearances by Robbie Benson, and have become a life-long fan of this talented, if somewhat obscure, actor. I will continue to seek-out his productions and performances wherever Robbie Benson may show himself next. We are blessed by the gift of such a competent and gifted artist.

Robby Benson co-wrote and stars in this simplistic basketball drama about a short but energetic high school basketball star who graduates to a university team on scholarship, immediately butting heads with the hard-ass coach when he appears not to be living up to his reputation. Of course there's also a spunky female graduate student assigned to the faltering phenom as a tutor (no growing pains portrait should be without one). Derivative sports drama with a soft-spoken hero who refuses to give up, leading to his participation in the Big Game (complete with his new sweetheart in the stands). G.D. Spradlin is over-the-top as the coach; his menacing quality and hayseed-sheriff persona are far heavier qualities than this flimsy script can support. Benson constantly wants to manage our responses to him: he's the naïve kid who is conned by a nubile hitchhiker, he's the quiet guy who's shy around girls, he's the budding rebel who tells the coach "I'm gonna beat you!" We're not allowed to perceive any of his angelic attributes for ourselves--it's spelled out in the writing. Young audiences at the time naturally responded to the climax (which is well-mounted by director Lamont Johnson), but the movie is a connect-the-dots job. ** from ****

Robby Benson and Annette O'Toole have good enough chemistry to make their unlikely pairing a crowd pleaser nonetheless. Benson is very good as the jock who is first coddled, then spurned, stirring the man within him. The movie has a great deal of fun with the special treatment given Jocks. Benson's work-study job is to turn the sprinklers on and off, but the sprinklers work automatically. Gail Strickland and (Director) Lamont Johnson are marvelous in small but hilarious supporting bits.

But the true star of the movie is G.D. Spradlin as the humorless and amoral hard-nosed basketball coach. Best exchange is when Benson says: "You're a great molder of character, coach" and Spradlin retorts, "You never asked me to mold your character." Spradlin is 100% true to his character as a John-Wooden-type of basketball coach. All in all, One on One shouldn't be taken too seriously but is quite enjoyable on its own terms.

Remember Robby Benson and Annette O'Toole? Probably not on your A-Lister list of must see actors, but they were some fifty (50) years ago. Boy do I feel real old now. But I digress. I may be feeling old, but so does this 1977 basketball sports themed film feel really old and obsolete.

I laughed loudly when I saw the college team that included young Henry Steele (Robby Benson) out on the basketball court in their now Hooters style shorts (LOL) and unlike the physical make up of most college basketball teams of today which are a mix of African Americans this film may have been misrepresented by having only two mean spirited basketball coaches as the teams representatives.

It's a story of a young man from Kansas City assumed to be a farmer but who works hard to prove his worth on and off the court as a good player and a greater individual free thinker.

It was okay but I do believe it has lost its luster and meaning over the past forty six (46) years. I give it a ho hum 5 out of 10 IMDb rating.

The movie is dated, but I still enjoy it. I guess I remember watching it the first time. The whole coming of age thing, growing up, etc.

What has really impressed me is Robby Benson's development over the years. He must be a good athlete: basketball, hockey, running, all seem to come naturally to him. I don't see the telltale back shots of doubles.

I enjoyed his acting and would like to see more. The last I heard he was teaching at USC. No not that one! The first one! The real one! The University of South Carolina in Columbia.

I would like to see what he could do with a mature role now.

I came across this movie on TV by chance, and was compelled to keep watching purely due to Robbie Benson's performance. If you are in any way a fan of the young (or older) charming, adorable, and sexy Robby Benson, this movie is worth your time. A young, completely collagen, silicone, and botox free, Melanie Griffith also has a wonderful little part as a hitchhiker at the beginning of the film. The first ten minutes are worth watching just for her!! (And I don't even like Melanie Griffith.)

In the lead role as Henry Steele, Robby Benson is completely engaging and totally believable as a naive and talented basketball player having his eyes opened to the realities of life in the big city and the world of big-business college sports. He also clearly trained physically for the part, increasing both his watchability on the court (as an athlete) as well as his sex appeal. Annette O'Toole is charming as his tutor; it is not hard to see why she grows to care about him as he rises to her challenge to study hard in spite of "jock" stereotypes.

As for Henry's conflicts with his coach and his difficulties in practice, while this part of the storyline is undoubtedly heavy-handed, his character is all the more lovable for the trials he faces physically, emotionally, and morally, both on and off the court. In addition, the story of the smalltown sports star who finds himself "humbled" when up against other great players from across the country is always interesting, even if it is overdone in certain respects.

Although the storyline overall is entirely predictable, the performances hold up over time. I found myself wishing Robby Benson was still a young heartthrob--or at least putting his pretty face, as well as his other talents, in front of the camera more often.

Be forewarned, however; unlike the rest of the film, the '70s ballads used for the soundtrack do not stand the test of time. Also, the corny movie tagline does not do the film justice.

While ultimately unimportant to the overall plot, I did find it quite annoying that so little attention was paid to the fact that Henry Steele is supposed to be this great basketball star, yet he's at least a foot shorter than every other player. It is mentioned maybe twice in the entire film. If you won't be able to set this annoyance aside while you watch, ... better to save this film for someone else.

Note: I would like to thank the previous reviewer, whose spot-on comments helped me pay attention to (and even re-watch) the film's better scenes, while pointing my finger to the fast-forward button on my TiVo at some of the "less-than-stellar" movie moments.

I watched this when I was at Uni. I was going through a negative patch and found that this film gave me a great lift. It taught me that it is much more fun doing things together than on your own. It also taught me that you can succeed if you really have the desire.

The music was great and was added to my collection of soundtracks. It also turned me on to the talents of the leading lady.

A good feeling film.