Youngblood

The kind of film you'd sooner forget, an ice-hockey romance aimed squarely at a sub-teenage audience. Teen heart-throb Lowe plays Dean Youngblood, the young hick from the sticks who wants to try his luck as an ice-hockey pro, and who joins up with a Canadian Junior League team, Hamilton Mustangs. There he is confronted both by the realities of his chosen sport, in the shape of a bully (Finn) who wants to grind his face into the ice, and by the traumas of puppy love as he falls for the nubile daughter (Gibb) of the team's macho coach (Lauter). Everything is predictable, except perhaps for the searching close-ups of the star's behind. In other respects, Lowe's performance is quite decent, and he cannot be blamed for the puerile humour of a director who considers putting false teeth into someone's beer to be a good joke.