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.

however, when it was finally released, and I watched it, I really didn't find it all that impressive.  About the only thing really worthwhile about this movie is that there's one point where I can point to a vague bluish blur, and tell anyone else present "that's me".

  There was one thing that struck me about this movie.  I am aware of a culture within the entertainment industry that seems to think that in order to be any good, a movie has to contain a fair amount of obscene language, nudity, gratuitous sex, and other similar garbage.  In watching this movie, it seems to me that its makers felt compelled to include a certain amount of this, but that they felt that doing so would interfere with the story they were trying to tell.  So what they did was to cram as much of it as they could into about the first 15 or 20 minutes of the movie; and then — having got that out of the way — they then went on to tell the story with very little further inclusion of such material.  You could completely cut out the first 15 or 20 minutes of the movie, and not miss it; and what remains could be shown on network TV during prime time very little further editing for content.

"Dead Solid Perfect" is another stereotyped sports movie, only this time it's not the underdog baseball team we're rooting for, it's Randy Quaid playing a second tier pro golfer. In the movie's favor is the fact that Quaid is somewhat sympathetic, as opposed to the obnoxious characters he usually plays. The film is part golf movie and part relationship primer, pretty accurately depicting the conflicts between men and women who are involved with the tour. Of special note is Jack Warden's performance as Randy Quaid's sponsor. Warden easily steals every scene he is in. If the predictability of "Dead Solid Perfect" can be overlooked, you will find it entertaining. - MERK