Customer Reviews

Personal Best

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is far and away the sexiest movie I have ever seen. But all you folks who enjoy seeing great big breasts, forget it. Also, if the sight of muscular, slender, not fat, women does not turn you on, forget it. Ms Hemingway and Ms donnelly are both gorgeous ladies; Ms Donnelly has the most beautiful face I have ever seen. Forget the story; there may never have been a story; it is about female pentathletes training for the 1980 Olympics, with the conflicts among the two ladies, their coach and the father of one of the ladies. The movie has a happy ending--I think. I won't worry about it. The dialogue, a lot of the time, is as if the actors are making it up as they go along. Sometimes it works. By far the greatest fault is the mushmouth delivery of the players. If the director had wanted desperately to guarantee that the audience not understand what the characters are saying, he could not have succeeded any better than he did. Would the director recognize a consonant if he could have heard one in this movie? The photography is magnificent: a lot of slow motion, long telephoto shots of the ladies in action on the field. Also, some composite (Maybe that's what they could be called.) shots of one particular activity, in slow motion, switching from one athlete to the next to the next to the next ... as the activity proceeds. Absolutely beautiful! My rating, above, is not for me, necessarily; it is my estimate of what more nearly normal folks would rate it. As for me, I will probably watch it another dozen times. I may leave the sound off, but ...; oh well, maybe two dozen times more!

I was lucky that I began seeing films when I did. The beginnings were auspicious - "Far from the Madding Crowd", "Butch Cassidy", "If ...." - but, much as I thought all of these were wonderful films, much as all but "If ...." have stayed with me all this time, I never viewed any of them but once until the advent of DVD, and I'd qualify none as "my favourite film". My favourite film is on offer right here, and it was something I saw four times on its first run.

One thing about "Personal Best" that has, I think, inhibited its recognition is the fact that nobody much has really seen it for what it is. Coming out in 1982, a year after "Chariots of Fire" had taken North America by storm (I've never figured that out yet), "Personal Best" was labelled as a track-and-field film. It also was a new sort of shocker, so the Lesbian theme got a lot of play, and, indeed, one reviewer headed his piece "Chariots of Desire". Its resurgence today is what's apparently "cult status" as a Lesbian film, although a cultist in 2008 would probably remark on the absence of raunch.

I spotted in 1982, and saw even more clearly today, that the film has a nice Californian theme - expectations, how we handle other people's expectations, and how we turn them into competitiveness. It's really the story of Chris - how she outgrows her father's expectations, Tingloff's expectations, and even her lover Tory's expectations - to take control of what she really wants for herself, an Olympic pentathlon place. The end (BIT OF A SPOILER) is wonderful in the process, with Chris persuading the injured Tory to forget what's expected of her and go for the victory she too wants for herself.

Towne's great risk, asking as much improvisation as he could of his cast rather than handing them a fully-written screenplay, has worked wonderfully. Scott Glenn, with the most professional experience, has done it best and produced a Tingloff nowhere near the monster the athletes make him out to be; the other professional principal, Mariel Hemingway's still soft and immature Chris, can also imagine good lines (and tearful faces) for herself. But it's an amateur, Patrice Donnelly as the hard-edged and competitive Tory, who turns out to be the best natural actress. And I'll say only one thing about the Lesbian theme; the Donnelly-Hemingway love scenes, react as you will, are moving, MOVING.

Track and field has to play a part. All the girls show an almost choreographed grace, Tingloff is a coach devoted to coaching, and Hemingway's coltish grace is suggestive of her university track background; but, once more, the character to watch is Tory - Donnelly probably moves more beautifully than anyone you've seen, and her visible swallowing of her discomfort, whatever efforts she's making, is a wonderful piece of characterization.

The more you see of "Personal Best", the more you'll see in it; I suggest forgetting the Lesbianism and the track and field - the expectations theme will take you over in its time. So will Patrice Donnelly; and you'll wonder why no awards, not even a future career, awaited her because of her part in this film.

I liked the movie when I saw it in the early 80s because of the break through "love" scenes and the sports theme. Right now I'm listening to a late night talk show interview with Mariel Hemmingway! I was drawn to this site because I was looking for some info on Jodi Anderson who acts in the movie. I knew her because she worked out in my gym in the 1980s and also worked there. In reality the sports part could have been based on her. In 1980 when she was 22 she won both the pentathlon and the long jump in the Olympic trials for the boycotted Moscow games. She also represented the USA in the pentathlon in the 1984 LA Olympics but was injured and withdrew. Considering the fame (and money) that USA female track athletes achieved in 1984 and later, the boycott was a tragedy for her and the other athletes most of whom are relatively unknown.

This film has EXACTLY the right ingredients for being one of the best Guy Flicks of all time. First, the behind-the-scenes look at athletic training techniques is incomparable. The preparation methods are highly educational, the stretching, the warm-ups, the cool-downs -- actually seeing these activities demonstrated is invaluable for aspiring athletes. Also, the details about various events were intriguing -- setting the blocks for sprinting, determining one's "pace" for high-jumping, the muscular ballet employed for the shot put. Watching Coach Scott Glenn (Urban Cowboy's "Wes Hightower") was inspirational, he obviously knew how to get the most from a team member. And the work-outs themselves were marvelous, the long runs, the hill-climbs, the post-workout massages and other physical therapy, with particular attention to specific body areas -- all of this information is extremely important for any male athlete, and should probably be viewed several times, numerous times, again and again, in order to ensure full comprehension and complete appreciation.

I can see why this movie is on the list of favorites. It was very moving and showed the extreme emotions that love causes. I would highly recommend it.

Let's see: early on in the movie Mariel Hemmingway does a nude scene as a shy 15-year-old being seduced by the 35-year-old lesbian who got her stoned. It's not child pornography only because Ms. Hemmingway wasn't a teenager anymore; but she does look the part in part because she didn't get her implants yet.
Aren't Catholic dioceses being sued because they didn't do enough to prevent the seduction of teenagers by homosexuals? And is AOL/Time-Warner ever going to be sued by someone whose seducer used this movie as a recruiting film?

I'm sorry I cannot agree with the majority about this movie. Maybe it's one of those 'you gotta be there to get it' things (it might have been breathtaking in the 80's) but I found this film dated and sexist. The relationship between the two girl is unconvincing and titilating. The coach/athlete thing undevelopped, inexplicable. The only good thing going for it is that it is an ok sports movie, with some nice scenes depicting training. These however were inevitable intersperced with slow motion takes of the female athletes' crotches taken from various angles, fitting for a movie heavy on the sexploitation angle. I realise that this may have been a 'breakthrough' movie, maybe depicting for the first time a pretty actress taking a leak while babbling some juvenile dribble, or helping her boyfriend hold his d...... while he takes a leak as a sign of their intimacy, but frankly, that I can do without. Perhaps the movie could have been cut down and saved but I think even then all you would be left with is a cool 'eighties' soundtrack and two girls running around a track. All I can say is at least 'Charlies Angels' wasn't pretentious!

So, I'm having a party conversation with a lesbian friend and "Personal Best" comes up. She denounces it as a lousy portrayal of lesbianism. Yeah, I answer, but it is a great sports movie! And it is too. Personal Best is not just a great sports movie, but is also a great bildungsroman ("coming of age" movie). In it the lead character, Chris Cahill (Mariel Hemingway) is involved in a dysfunctional relationship with her father who is a coach. We see little of her family life. The movie revolves around her moving to a new family and getting new parents: Tory Skinner (Patrice Donnelly) and Terry Tingloff (Scott Glenn, who is, you guessed it, a coach). The problem is the tranference of parental relations is confused from the very beginning by a sexual relation between Chris and Tory. The waters are muddled even further when jealousy rears his head between the "parents," and between Tory and Chris who are set in competition against each other by Tingloff. Through it all, Chris grows up so that, when Tingloff comes on to her in a vulnerable situation, she staves him off (unlike Tory in a earlier scene) and begins to develop her own relationships and her own philosophy of competition. The moral of the movie is: To be competitive you don't have to be better than everybody else, just a little bit better than you were yesterday. You don't have to kill the competition, you can love the competition, but always remember, you are the competition.

Whether you viewed this film when it first appeared in the '80s or today, you cannot help but get the feeling that you are right there w/Tory (Patrice Donnelly) & Chris (Mariel Hemingway) competing on the track and struggling through the pains of high level competition. The technical advice given this film is marvelous, thanks in part to co-star Patrice Donnelly.

Also, the attraction between the two stars is touching and their ensuing love scenes are gentle and moving. When the two stars struggle in their 3yr long relationship, you (the viewer) struggle right along with them. Unfortunately, the two stars never address the reason for their breakup and one is left w/a feeling of incompleteness.

Scott Glenn is very convincing as the coach who falls in love w/Tory and becomes the number one jerk to keep Tory & Chris apart.

This is a film about competition in sports and about the love/sexual atraction between two women. The scenes that capture the more difficult moments in sports competition (the beginning of a 1000 meters, by example)are really good and beautiful. There you can see the high feelings of people that dedicates theirs lifes to win in a sport campus. Otherwise, the love scenes are delicate and very beautiful. You can feel by yourself the feelings between the two women. High feelings. What I really didn't like is the end of the love story. It is not credible and seems to be moralizing. But you have to see this picture. Great photography, great bodies. I saw it when it was new (1983, 1984, I guess) and I saw it now and I find it better than then.