Word: filming
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Though Rich Kids is a snappy title, it does not fit this fashionable, smart-talking New York comedy. The film's twelve-year-old hero and heroine, Jamie (Jeremy Levy) and Franny (Trini Alvarado), are rich all right, but Rich Kids has no interest in the vicissitudes of wealth. The movie is actually about the effect of divorce on children-an equally good subject, but one that deserves more justice than it receives here. As the cute but empty title indicates, Rich Kids would rather be glib than honest...
...film has some assets: attractive Upper West Side locations, a fine cast of New York stage actors and a smattering of clever lines. The basic premise is sound too: When School Chums Jamie and Franny get sick of their respective bickering parents, they run away to spend an illicit weekend acting out the fantasies of romance, something that is absent in their homes. While this plot offers plenty of opportunities for big laughs and emotional ironies, the film rarely mines them. Most of Rich Kids consists of mild scenes that sound better in principle than they play onscreen...
Director Robert M. Young (Short Eyes) could have destroyed the film completely by accentuating the sitcom excesses of the screenplay. He avoided that error only to swing too far the other way: his erratic pacing often kills those jokes that are worthwhile. The final confrontation between the kids, their parents and the parents' lovers is an all too typical disaster. A potentially hilarious climax ends up looking like a chaotic dress rehearsal, just as this potentially powerful movie collapses under the wreckage of its confused intentions.-Frank Rich
...morning after a game. But more important, it is about pain at the abnormal levels, about the anesthetizing pills the guys pop to endure daily practice, and the even more dangerous stuff they receive in shots on game day so they can play hurt. The film is also about what living this way does to one's head. To block out their day-to-day athletic agonies, the players must constantly indulge in mindlessly violent pleasures-sexual, alcoholic and generally macho-rowdy...
Based on former Footballer Peter Gent's good novel, the film shows this sadomasochistic world through the eyes of Phillip Elliott (Nick Nolte), a pass catcher with good hands and, in the view of the coaches and owners, a bad attitude. Elliott's insouciance springs from a developing conviction that he and his mates are exploited (if well-paid) field hands, risking their lives, or anyway their health, to assuage their owner's ego and their coach's desire to turn them into ciphers...