Film #58: Foolin' Around

One of the ultimate "Saturday Afternoon" movies for me is what looked to me to be a waste of time at first glance--and this was when I was 15 or so! I know. Foolin' Around looks terrible. But I was quite smitten with HBO back in 1981 or so, and would watch anything they showed. And I'm glad because I love Foolin' Around. It's a dumb li'l movie following Texas architechture student Gary Busey as he arrives at a Minnesota school for his studies. Volunteering for a science experiment that goes nutso, our hero meets rich girl science student Annette O' Toole. He falls for her and she for him, but she's engaged to be married to ultra-blonde asshole John Calvin. What's more, her father is architect Eddie Albert, and her mother is the shrewish Cloris Leachman. The mother loves the blonde asshole, the father hates him. (Leachman, it should be said here, is having an affair with the butler, well-played by Tony Randall.) So Foolin' Around here turns into a hybrid of The Graduate, where it's up to Busey to disrupt the inevitable don't-do-it wedding scene.


I know it sounds like I hate this movie. I would count it in the "guilty pleasures" category. But I watched it numerous times, even once in my 20s, and I still loved it, so I don't know why I should feel so guilty. I always like Gary Busey's aw-shucks style, and I think the very pretty Annette O'Toole really takes a shine to it as well, making the love story quite believeable (and that's a feat). I like Eddie Albert in a role that would have you thinking he was going to be the bad guy, but the director, Richard T. Heffron, had enough sense to cast Albert against type (he'd been playing villains in movies all throughout the 1970s). Albert's chemistry with Busey is tops as well--they have a terrific scene together on the top of an in-progress building, where Albert puts an engagement ring on the end of a steel girder to test Busey's committment to his daughter. (I need to mention that the movie features two very catchy songs by Seals and Crofts--strangely, just like another Annette O'Toole movie reviewed here recently, One on One).


It's just a warm-hearted trifle, Foolin' Around. That's all it is. But I LIKE warm-hearted trifles. So sue me. This is definitely one of my put-it-on-DVD wishes. To see Busey in his prime again, playing his only real romantic lead, and to see the young Annette O'Toole cavorting with him would somehow--don't ask me how--be ecstacy to me. (By the way, the Busey illustration is by Brooklyn's own "Caricature King" Dan Springer; filmicability has linked to his amazing visual blog everybody's gotta be in a gang. Check it out!

Film #53: One on One

This is one of those "Saturday Afternoon" movies I like so much--sort of funny, sort of dramatic, a little romantic, not too demanding but not totally stupid either. Just real breezy and simple. Star Robby Benson co-wrote this likable story of a pampered high school basketball star who gets a scholarship to play with UCLA, but finds himself overwhelmed by a backbreaking practice regimen, a full class load, and the insults from the school's hard-assed coach (played with muscle by G.D. Spradlin). I like that the movie has a lot the say about the general overreaction to the talents of sports stars (though it throws in the towel and gets behind our boy Benson in the end). And I think this is the sort of movie role that made Benson a star in the 1970s--he's an innocent, but he's not totally stupid (at least, not by the final reel).

Annette O'Toole, having been a guest star on numerous television shows for ten years, got her first big movie role here as Benson's anti-jock tutor who agrees against her better judgement to help Benson with
the books. Her red hair, blue eyes and saucy spirit are enough to make One on One a movie worth watching. Spradlin, too, is a big draw (most may remember him as the general who gives Martin Sheen the orders to terminate Marlon Brando in Apocalypse Now or as the crooked senator in The Godfather Part II). His coach is a mean ol' cuss, that's for sure. '70s songsters Seals and Crofts had a Top 40 hit with "My Fair Share" and warble the title tune as well. One on One is directed by Lamont Johnson, who'd won a Emmy a few years earlier for directing the downbeat Execution of Private Slovik. Both that and this charming sports drama should be released on DVD as soon as possible. Here's a great scene with G.D. Spradlin trying to make Benson's life very difficult.