You won't be disappointed!

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

All the Right Moves is about how a simple mistake, made because as a youth you didn't know better, can change your future radically, and how your arrogance can crush your life or someone else's.The good. Excellent 80s small steel town period piece. Very nice acting. Well built scenario with an interesting story.The bad. The music is also very much 80s and pushed on the viewer a little bit much.The ugly. It's getting old.The result. If you're a Tom Cruise fan, it's a chance for you to see him at the beginning of his career. If you like 80s movies, this is a nice one. The others might want to abstain.

All the Right Moves begins with the triumphant synth rock melody of David Campbell's score accompanied by shots of grimy working class settings of train terminals and factories indicating that viewer is in store for a blue collar John Hughes films that has one foot in eighties cinema and the other still dipped in the obsessions with 70s New Hollywood. Tom Cruise is quite convincing as a working class jock while Lea Thompson as she only helps to bring up connotations of herself in Back to the Future and would seem more appropriate in a world of upper middle class WASPs like Growing Pains or Family Ties rather than the lurid Welcome Back Kotter universe of All the Right Moves. Perhaps Cruise needed a girlfriend who seemed a little sluttier but still had Thompson's vulnerability? Ally McSheedy? Chris Penn plays Cruise's less attractive jock pal and Craig T. Nelson establishes his typecast as a humourless coach and all three characters express similar desires very early in the film about 'moving on' and escaping their working class background. Knowing the direction that the manufacturing industry would take in the 80s this is probably an understandable goal. However, each character have obstacles preventing them from establishing that dream - some of which are intertwined. Lea Thompson contributes to this story by making Tom Cruise sexually frustrated during awkward love scenes. High school football is used as a metaphor for cooperating to exceed ones limits as detailed by Craig T. Nelson in a pre-game speech that would lead to him being fired if it were uttered today let alone ten years ago. It's at this point of the review, I wish to remind the viewer I have no idea how American Football works - all I know is people jump on each other and touchdown is a good thing. Anyway some play happens in the game that causes Cruise to be thrown off the team for disciplinary reasons and this all leads to a descent that includes being falsely framed for terrorising the neighbourhood and the last half hour of the film covers a number of other plot twists that occur from that one prior conflict along with a short resolution. With just under ninety minutes of run time All the Right Moves is a satisfyingly short rise and fall and rise story with an interesting mix of New Hollywood drama and the emerging 80s teen film genre.

All the Right Moves (1983) *** (out of 4) Nice slice-of-life drama about a high school football player (Tom Cruise) living in a small PA town where there's not much hope for a future except for getting a scholarship. He eventually gets thrown off the team by his coach (Craig T. Nelson) and soon realizes that his entire life might have just got thrown away. Even though the story is quite predictable, this is still a pretty entertaining little movie that actually has a lot more grit than you might expect. Cruise was still wet behind the ears and he certainly doesn't give a great performance but I thought he handled the role of this poor kid trying to get out of a failed life pretty well. Cruise certainly faired a lot better during some of the more dramatic scenes and his relationship with Lea Thompson, who plays his girlfriend here, was quite good as well. Thompson comes off very natural here and it really does feel like they were playing a real couple going through real problems. Chris Penn is also pretty good in his small supporting role. The film belongs to Nelson though and it's a real shame that he didn't have more screen time as he and Cruise work extremely well together and for my money the heart of the story was in their relationship yet for some reason it's not explored as deep as it should have been. The ending is quite predictable and you'll see it coming from a mile away but it was still touching in its own right. Director Chapman really doesn't shy away from many of the subjects and I thought it fairly looked at life in a small town via kids not wanting to turn out like their parents and how the majority of them are given up for dead even before they're out of school. The film contains a nice bit of drama from start to finish and it's certainly worth viewing even if it's not one of the greatest sports movies out there.

"The only way football star Stefen Djordjevic (Tom Cruise) will avoid a life in the blast furnaces of his bleak Pennsylvania hometown is by winning a college scholarship. Even his coach (Craig T. Nelson) dreams of parlaying a winning team into a college job far away from this graveyard of the American Dream. But it's not long before the two virtually ruin each other's chances for escape and their door to the future starts to close. Lea Thompson and Christopher Penn co-star," according to the DVD sleeve's synopsis.Mr. Cruise is back in high school, after his successful "Risky Business" - still playing at a theater near you! in 1983. Cruise looks the part of a bulked-up football player. He and Ms. Thompson (as Lisa Litski) have a sexy nude scene. The supporting cast, including skinny Chris Penn (as Brian), perform noticeably well. And, it's nice to see Gary ("Alien Nation") Graham in an early role. The story is mildly engrossing. How Paul Carafotes (as Vinnie Salvucci) made his desk rise, in those tight jeans, is debatable.***** All the Right Moves (10/21/83) Michael Chapman ~ Tom Cruise, Craig T. Nelson, Lea Thompson, Chris Penn