Word: semi-tough
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...FINE Dan Jenkins novel this movie is loosely based on, the prefix semi- attached to an adjective was a sort of redneck oi vey-- thus semi-tough meant very tough indeed. Novels rarely come to the screen with the exact story line of the printed book--Jenkins described his trials with the screenplay in a recent Sports Illustrated article--but director Michael Ritchie has loaded up the old story of two country boys (and one country girl) who come to the city and make good with New York cocktail party jokes, including a sometimes flat parody of Erhardt...
...buddy, split end Shake Tiller, and Jill Clayburgh is the girl of their dreams, Miss Barbara Jane Bookman, a Phyllis George clone who looks to have maybe been Sigma Chi Sweetheart of 1962 at Ole Miss. And before this proceeds any further, the discriminating moviegoer should know that while Semi-Tough is at times an honestly funny film, it is also maddeningly sexist...
...think, and how could a film starring Burt Reynolds be any other way? This is unfair; Reynolds saves Semi-Tough, and the fault lies not with him but with Ritchie. Sunbelt attitudes toward women are hard to define; what you tend to forget is that Scarlett O'Hara was one tough old bitch. Barbara Jane Bookman, secure in her looks and her money, might have to take a lot of grief from her stud football-playing buddies, but by God, she should give as good as she gets, and the film never captures the uneasy jocularity that is a necessary...
...Semi-Tough. At the Cheri One, daily...
...boys canoe down a remote country river and find survival in the wilderness to be more than they can handle. As the self-confident superjock who leads the expedition, Burt Reynolds actually gets to act--something he hasn't done since, even in the much-touted but disappointing "Semi-Tough. Jon Voigt and Ned Beatty are also excellent. (The latter's "squeal like a pig" scene is a memorably gruesome portrayal of humiliation.) The film has a great deal of violence, and a long, agonizing sequence in which Voight tortuously scales the face of a cliff. But ultimately, "Deliverance...