Sorry, this movie sucks

Good concept, poorly executed.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

The leading man, Rick Springfield did a good job with the lousy script he had to work with, but the casting could not have been worse for the leading lady. The actress (Janet Elliber) was ugly as dirt and looked about 15 years older than Rick, and there was nothing likable about her. She was supposed to be a mental health professional, yet she was extremely unbalanced and seemed to have a number of personality disorders. Patti Hansen gave a good performance as the jealous ex girl-friend, but her role wasn't developed enough to improve the film as a whole. Also, this movie came out before the PG-13 rating came along, so the editing is extremely choppy in places since the producers were trying to avoid an R rating. I think it definitely could have been better, and there are a few good scenes, particularly when Rick's character Jamie is performing on stage. Most of the music on the soundtrack was written and performed by Rick himself, and some of the songs like "Love Somebody" and "Don't Walk Away" are really memorable.

If you are going to go through all the trouble of making a movie, how much more of an effort is it to make it somewhat clever, or at the very least moderately fun? This looks like a quickie vehicle slapped together to capitalize on Rick Springfield's 80s popularity. It was his era; he could have belched the alphabet and it would have gone gold. Expanding on that theory, we have "Hard To Hold" as the cramp-producing result.The woman he is pursuing is all wrong for him; you cannot possibly get what he sees in her. She is totally unsympathetic, unlikeable and miserable, seemingly in a chronic PMS state for the majority of the movie. Someone should have given Patti Hansen more to do, as her character lends the only semblance of crediblity to this career-squelching morass of mediocrity.

I agree with another person's comments that Rick was not given much to work with. Rick is a very talented actor and this movie WASTED his talents, other than the sequences with him singing in concert. The chemistry between his character, Jamie Roberts, and social worker Diana Lawson is very lacking. She looks old enough to be his mom, even! I thought the band didn't even need parts in the script. They were used as props anyway. I did like the character of Nikki, Jamie's ex-girlfriend, who tries desperately to get back together with him, but continuously gets rejected. This character could have even played a bigger role in the movie.However, if you are a fan of Rick's (as I am), it is a must-see. The music is the best part of the show, and once again Rick triumphs in this field! The song "Love Somebody" (performed in a concert sequence at the end of the film) makes the hour and a half long movie worth renting or buying.

This movie could have been better but because of the limited nature of the story line I think that people didn't get the chance to see what a good actor Rick really is.The story to me seemed to be half done in that it couldn't decide whether to be a comedy or a drama. And I just couldn't feel the chemistry between his character Jamy and the love interest Diana (Janet Eilber) While I think that Patti Hansen's character of Niki Nides got unfortunately left in the background, and left under developed due to the material each one had been given to work with (or the lack of it).The soundtrack for this movie had some of Rick's best works on it written by him. No small feat and it also had some other really standout musicians on it (Peter Gabriel, Graham Parker, and Nona Hendryx) And the real shame in this is that the movie was so poorly done in the wriitng, directing, and some of the other character actors involved it managed to somehow sink the soundtrack where by unfortunately and VERY unfairly sealing Rick's possible fate as a washed up teen idol. Which is NOT the title that a man of his talent deserves How sad!