Jocks

Unless they can win a championship, LA College's tennis team will lose their scholarships, and their coach (Richard Roundtree) will be out of a job. At their next competition in Las Vegas, the players pull out all the stops to win, employing a variety of underhanded techniques in an effort to undermine their opponents' confidence, but find that the team from arch rivals Dallas Tech are just as devious in their methods.

An important factor of many decent teen comedies is a likable protagonist; Jocks, from director Steve Carver, not only features a thoroughly obnoxious lead character, a self obsessed douche by the name of The Kid (Scott Strader), but his friends are just as irritating, making the film a thoroughly charmless affair made all the worse by a lack of decent jokes, some really dull sporting scenes, and the pitiful sight of Christopher Lee slumming it as a strict college president (just one of the actor's many career low points).

The presence of the lovely Mariska Hargitay (as Dallas Tech babe Nicole, who inexplicably takes a shine to The Kid) makes matters a little easier to bear, as do the film's few moments of gratuitous female nudity, but as a whole, Jocks scores very few points.

"Jocks" is indistinguishable from dozens of 80s teen comedies. Even such names as Christopher Lee (what is he doing here??) and Richard Roundtree can't give it much class. It's tame, it's predictable....but it's not dislikable. I'll give it a low rating (*1/2), but fans of such comedies would rate it higher. Those tennis scenes could've been handled better, though.

...from those trash purveyors at Crown International Pictures, who seemed to flood cinema screens in the 1980s with a never-ending wave of low budget high school comedies that were anything but funny. JOCKS is about a team of tennis misfits who must learn skill and humility to beat their opponents, and is notably only for featuring a better supporting cast than is normal for the genre.

Sadly, JOCKS is a film saddled with some truly poor writing when it comes to the central characters, reducing them to mere unlikeable (and unsympathetic) caricatures. Scott Strader's self-centred jerk is a particularly miserable creation so perhaps JERKS would have been a more fitting title. Out of the youthful leads, only Mariska Hargitay - Mickey's daughter - makes an impression due to her natural beauty, alongside Donald Gibbs as wildman Ripper, a role he would play over and over again throughout his career, most notably in Van Damme's BLOODSPORT.

Aside from the usual lame jokes and gratuitous nudity, JOCKS offers a trio of supporting roles from familiar faces. Most notable of these is Christopher Lee, miscast as the school president, although he only gets a few scenes (and the most notable of these lampoons his role in the musketeers films). Then we get a sweaty R. G. Armstrong (PREDATOR) as the coach, and the inimitable Richard Roundtree, wasted in another 'wise elder' type role, imparting knowledge to the kids. In any case, it's a mess of a film, and one worth skipping unless you're a sucker for this sort of stuff. Director Steve Carter previously helmed the enjoyable Chuck Norris action flick AN EYE FOR AN EYE, also starring Lee, and apparently called in a favour to get him to show up here.

Spying the luminaries in the Jocks cast roster, it's tempting to imagine that this must be an elite breed of the adolescent coitus comedy promised by its poster artwork. It's not; Christopher Lee and Richard Roundtree reportedly only appeared in this film as a favor to director Steve Carver, and nothing that happens in this movie bears any relation to the image on that selfsame poster. Regardless, Jocks does feature a few time-capsule nuggets which disqualify it from being a complete waste of time. It's just a shame that a filmmaker with such talented friends couldn't find a better use for them than this.

The plot traces the journey of a group of hard-partying misfit tennis players who travel to Las Vegas to compete in a tournament that they must win in order to stop their school from cutting their funding and disbanding the team. Hijinks ensue, they hit some bars and meet some girls, conflicts arise and are surmounted, etc. In that sense, Jocks almost comes across as a real movie. Unfortunately, whether you enjoy tennis or not, it's not a sport that lends itself particularly well to an against-all-odds athletics story, which leaves only the comedy and the genre's lewder elements to supply the bulk of the thrills. Since the quantity of the latter is so paltry here, Jocks doesn't really qualify as a sex comedy, and with only a handful of chuckle-worthy moments to speak of, it barely qualifies as a comedy at all.

On the plus side, the Sin City setting adds immeasurably to the film's appeal, capturing the storied mecca in all of the delightfully divey glory of its bygone years. Viewers who never experienced Vegas before it was transformed into a high-tech adult Disneyland will barely recognize the place as it appears on the screen here. Most of the landmarks that defined the town in the '80s don't even exist anymore, so all of the establishing shots and backgrounds are rich with a nostalgia that's often more engaging than what's actually taking place in the movie.

Most of the characters are presented as one-note archetypes which exclude any real connection to them (Tex says "y'all" and wears a cowboy hat, yuppie Jeff is too square to party and has an ex-fiancée improbably named Muffy, Jheri-curled Andy hits on every girl he meets and is a good dancer, etc). Don Gibb from Revenge Of The Nerds is on hand to stretch his acting chops by essentially playing Ogre again, and much effort is expended trying and failing to make the rebranded "Ripper" this outing's equivalent break-out character. But the gang's centerpiece is the team's star player, "The Kid", who Scott Strader manages to infuse with enough charisma to make him mostly likeable even though he's basically a d-bag. Still, even though the film lingers its focus on this core squad, the supporting cast is far more memorable and enjoyable to watch. Lee and Roundtree would be welcome presences even if they were just reading out of a phone book, veteran pinch-hitter Trinidad Silva steals any scene he appears in, and a young and gorgeous Mariska Hargitay is a joy to behold whenever she's on the screen.

Jocks isn't strictly bottom of the barrel, but with so many promising elements in play that never reach their potential, the film is ultimately interesting for what it could have been rather than for what it actually is. 1980's completists will have a decent time, but for anyone curious why fans of the era still hold movies like this close to their hearts, there is a long list of titles that will provide much better answers than this one does.

1st watched 10/19/2014 -- 2 out of 10(Dir-Steve Carver): Lame tennis movie where a ragtag band of college student try to be fun-loving, win at tennis, and stop the authorities from closing down the program at Los Angeles University. From the beginning --- this movie shows it's weaknesses in storytelling and consistent character flow right away after the first couple of scenes. A president, played by Christopher Lee, wants a winning championship sports program at the college because of a long drought and convinces the sports director to use the tennis team to get to this end. In the very next scene, the director is trying to fire the tennis coach, played by Richard Roundtree, but gives his group one more chance to win it all. The best player, named the Kid, first has to be re-instated after a boatload of offenses. The complete team consists of a dumb muscle man, a pleasing youngun, the Kid, a Mexican, a Prince-like impersonator who likes to go drag on the court, and a Texas betting wiz named "Tex", of course. This group is going to win a Championship?? In my highschool days of playing on a team I never saw any athletes that played tennis like this bunch. So anyway, the Kid -- actually turns out to be the most normal one of the group?? and eventually becomes attracted to a girl, played by Marsika Hargitay of "Law and Order" in a very early role. The group attend a couple of risqué things like wet t-shirt contests and then play a whole 2 team matches in Las Vegas for a small college championship competition. This movie is pretty much a waste of time, even though for some reason -- you are routing for the group in the matches before the end of the movie. The lack of character consistency and the story are the real losers in the movie including you -- if you watch this movie.