Les faux-durs

Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson team up to play a pair of amiable pro-football players in Semi-Tough a good natured comedy about these two and the owner'd daughter. Sounds like you should be waiting for punchline and in a sense the whole film is one.

Jill Clayburgh is the owner's daughter, the owner being Robert Preston who is a flamboyant Texas millionaire and owner of the Dallas football team which for copyright reasons is never referred to as the Cowboys.

Having grown up with the team Clayburgh is on a first name basis with all the players and they treat her with due deference. She'd like a little more going with either Reynolds or Kristofferson, but can't make her mind up which one. It's almost like Crosby/Hope/Lamour without any songs.

Some nice performances will be found from masseuse Lotte Lenya, fake motivational speaker Bert Convy, and also the best from Brian Dennehy as a defensive end who's really abusing the steroids. It's from Dennehy that we get some potentially serious moments in an easy going film.

Fans of the leads should appreciate Semi-Tough.

I didn't think this movie was good at all. I expected it to be a lot better. Some parts were okay but it just didn't make a lot of sense. Burt did better in the movies he did before this movie even. Some parts were funny like when he smiled almost evily but other than that, not that good. 2/5

"Semi-Tough" has got to be one of the best comedies of all time. The casting is perfect, and the acting is very understated. You could really identify with Kris Kristofferson, Bert Reynolds, and Jill Clayburgh as lost children of the 1960s looking for the answers to life in the 1970s. They parody to a "T" some of the self-help and consciousness raising scams of the times.

I especially loved the thinly disguised "BEAT" which closely paralleled "est" (Erhard Seminars Training, and they always wrote the acronym in lower case) which attracted many followers. I had the misfortune that year of working for a boss who was an est graduate (they called themselves "estholes") and two ex-hippie co-workers. est was their life, almost like a religion to them, and they were always pressuring the other workers on the team to take est. They had their own language -- e.g. "I'll take responsibility for that," "We have an agreement," and especially "I got it." (meaning I understand it). While Kris Kristofferson "got" the training, Jill Clayburgh did not. Since they wanted to get married they were afraid of a "mixed marriage." Fortunately Burt Reynolds also takes BEAT training and pretends to "get it" although you later learn he saw right through it from the beginning. Burt Convy as the seminar leader bore a striking resemblance to Warner Erhard, the founder and leader of est.

For your $300, the training consisted of two weekends spent in a hotel ballroom from about 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM both days. There were no breaks even to eat or go to the bathroom (no kidding!) The stunts in the movie paralleled the real est training, with things like lying on the floor hugging your pillow while kicking your feet in the air. After the training you were supposedly a changed person, free of your old hang-ups. Fortunately, I found another job where I was not subject to "estual harassment."

Robert Preston, the Team Owner, played his role perfectly too. To a background of Gene Autry records which matched his own view of the world, he tried many other psychic movements, including crawling around on the floor rather than walking. They also tried "Pelfing," a thinly veiled send-up of Rolfing. In fact, one other football player was a devotee of "pyramid power," proudly wearing a pyramid from a necklace.

This movie has been on TV but not recently. It would be fun to see it again. Interesting that the IMDB poll for this movie shows that viewers over 45 enjoyed it much more than the kids under 18. Yeah, they weren't around during those happy days of Disco, Leisure Suits, disaster movies, gas lines, est, Lifespring, Rolfing, Pyramid Power, and of course, "Happy Days."

If you enjoyed "Semi-Tough," another film you'd like is "Serial."

I loved the book, but failed to heed warnings to steer clear of the film. The script is hackneyed. Reynolds, as Billy Clyde Puckett, gives his usual smirking performance, while Kristoffersen devil-may-care mien of his character, split end 'Shake' Tiller, and Dennehy adequate captures the man-child, T.J. Lambert. However, the script does little justice to Clayburgh's character, Barbara Jane, who was the best developed and most interesting character in Jenkins' novel.

The novel, "Semi-Tough" was authored by Dan Jenkins, possibly the funniest sportswriter who ever lived and a very astute chronicler of football and golf. The novel was absolutely hilarious, completely un-PC but a very realistic satire of pro football 50 years ago. The movie resembles nothing close to the novel. It's not so much even a satire of football as for some reason it becomes a sendup of EST and the various self- help spiritually movements that sprang up in the late 60's, most of which were cons and/or pyramid schemes. The film stinks, but the novel and the sequel, "Life It's Ownself" are a riot. Jenkins was a gem.