All the Right Moves
The director wanted Lea Thompson and Tom Cruise to go undercover to remember what high school was like. They went to separate schools, and while Cruise was spotted after just one day because someone recognized him from Taps (1981), Thompson went four days, was asked out by many guys and got caught smoking.,Pennsylvania high schools are grouped according to size of a school's student body. This is to avoid small schools having to play much larger one. Clearly, Ampipe is a much smaller school than Walnut Heights so they would not have ever played each other in football.,Steff: Scholarship here, no scholarship here. Who the hell gave you that power?,Featured in Siskel & Ebert: Tom Cruise: The Star Next Door (1990),All The Right Moves
(Main Title)
Performed by Jennifer Warnes and Chris Thompson
Music by Tom Snow
Lyrics by Barry Alfonso
Produced by Tom Snow and Brooks Arthur,Sports movies are often stuck in the same old clichéd formula, but more often than not, they work. To All the Right Moves credit, it doesn't follow that winning formula, but it also doesn't necessarily create its own well-strung story.

In one of his first acting roles, Tom Cruise stars alongside Craig T. Nelson and Lea Thompson as his coach and girlfriend respectively. If for nothing else, this film is worth a watch just for those performances alone. Cruise and Thompson prove to be fearless in their risqué high school roles, and Nelson plays a great antagonist and obstacle for Cruise's 'Stefen' character. I can't speak too highly on the film itself, but those performances are certainly worth 90 minutes of your time.

The biggest issue with All the Right Moves is that it actually tries to make too many 'moves' with its story, pun intended. It doesn't really know what it wants to be. On one hand, it's a nice coming of age story with Thompson and Cruise. The next it's an intense football drama between two schools. Or even a film that tackles the heavy themes of class struggle and sexuality, just to name a few. There's just no real focus here. The minute you start to get invested with what Nelson's team is doing, led by Cruise among others, it changes its course to another plot point entirely. I appreciate the film's intentions, it just didn't hit home the ideas that it set out to, and it suffers because of that.

What I can say is that this film was probably more of a product of its time. The soundtrack is blatantly filled with slow and smooth 80's tracks that can be distracting. The sound editing as a whole is pretty poor. The football sequences are borderline amateur. And some of the plot points have been done much better in more recent years. Sure, that's not the film's fault, but it does hinder its re-watchability to an extent. It's fun to watch a young Cruise and Thompson share great chemistry, but there's not a lot beneath that.

+Cruise shows promise

+Attempts to explore deep themes

-But fails at most of them

-Misguided direction

56/100,