Word: semis
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...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...
What that scene says is that no one-not even the semi-tough-minded among us-is immune to the absurdities of ideologies that hold out a promise of instant salvation. On a slightly deeper level, the movie is warning us to beware celebrities bearing false prophecies. Because of the absorption in self and craft that their work requires, performers-be they actors or athletes-can be easy converts, and therefore untrustworthy in their wayward enthusiasms for abstract realms. On the more positive side, the picture suggests that if salvation is to be had, it lies in that pragmatic resistance...
...Semi-Tough may or may not turn out to be the year's best comedy-there's Annie Hall to remember and Mel Brooks yet to be heard from-but it is without a doubt the year's most socially useful film. Dan Jenkins' bestseller has been slow to reach the screen, and in the intervening years the subject of his satire-pro football's Lombardi era, with all its dark Nixonian overtones-has lost some of its edge. Adapter Bernstein and Director Ritchie have found a contemporary lunacy with the same rich possibilities...
...smartness in it. The acute observation of cult behavior, not to mention the sporting life, suggests painful research somewhere along the way. The picture is, above all, a principled comedy, speaking lightly but honestly about life as it is-and what it might be-in our times. That sets Semi-Tough apart from anything else in recent memory...