Take It Easy

Steve's father is a little upset that his son, one time high school football and gymnast star, is going to seed; Steve (Gaylord) is a little miffed that father doesn't seem to care any more - 'We were a team!' - and runs from the house into the arms of new girl in town Julie (Jones). She's a gymnast too, and he joins her in training under the stern gaze of Coach Soranhoff (Pataki), who is busy drumming discipline into his class before they take a crack at getting into the national team. The film offers a full schedule of gratuitous muscle-stretching, in which the fact that Jones and ex-Olympic champ Gaylord do their own flip-flops would have been more impressive had it also come up with anything resembling a proper plot. The 'boy from the wrong side of the track makes good theme', already used in Magnoli's awful Purple Rain, simply doesn't wash, while the tedious disco soundtrack serves only to thud home the pointlessness of it all.