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Such a frustrating disappointment

Highly Overrated But Still Good

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

It's my private opinion that Robert Towne really wanted to make a picture about two gay **male** athletes but had to write the parts for women in order to get the project financed. The film critics loved it. Audiences stayed away in droves and a five year exile from movie directing was imposed on award-winning scriptwriter Towne, who had to answer some nasty questions of the "What on earth were you thinking?" variety even as the echo of this box office bomb died away.Sexual aberrance is not confined to the women characters. While there are some fleeting views of real male athletes--shot putters, etc.--acting quite normally, something is decidedly off about the two male leads. The young water polo player who appears late in the film to serve as Chris' (Mariel Hemingway) male love interest is as pretty as any of the women and even less masculine. He is sexually unaggressive if not downright indifferent to the charms of Ms Hemingway, leaving Chris to make the first move, and the second, and the third. Tellingly, he is seen in the full frontal nudity which Ms. Hemingway carefully avoids throughout. As the trainer of the women's pentathlon team, Scott Glenn is downright bitchy. His often flamboyant dress and flawlessly coiffed hair--he and Patrice Donnelly have hair of the same length--also give him a look like no athletic coach ever seen.On the plus side, the recent transfer to widescreen disc incorporates all the latest video technology and it shows in the gorgeous views of the California coast and the sparkling blue of Mariel Hemingway's eyes. Her breasts have virtually disappeared (too much upper body work?) but she's got a great pair of legs which again and again are exhibited in the briefest of track shorts.And the notorious sauna scene? Only if you think muscles on women are attractive. The single lesbian love scene? Very brief, and so tasteful you'll have a hard time staying awake. (I feel a twinge of sympathy for Ms. Donnelly who allowed herself to appear in full frontal in both these scenes, perhaps having been told this was her Big Break in films. It wasn't.) The athletic competition scenes--which take up the last quarter of the picture? Lots of slow mo, good pacing and camera angles, but--the box office reception shows just how many moviegoers in 1982 were interested in seeing women's sports. Just how much have attitudes changed in twenty-five years? Well, we'll see.

Although it has been many years since I saw this film it stands out as being an excellent film, both in the content-human relationships & competition, as well as the cinematography.Mariel Hemingway is simply stunning. Indeed the Women's High Jump is among the best events to watch at any Track & Field meet-as the girls are generally young, long & lean.If you follow T & F some of the high jumpers are able to compete at the highest level for over a decade. (I think that 5 of the top 8 of the 1988 Seoul Olympics had also made the final of the 1976 Olympics).There were two good films that I know of that had aim as 80 Olympics-Golden Girl with Susan Anton & this film. So how long did the USSR stay in Afganistan after the 1980 Olympic boycott? 13 years. So if a politician says a sporting team should boycott another country because of civil rights etc-then remind them of this Olympics, which in turn stuffed up the next Olympics as well as a couple of Commonwealth Games especially for African countries.Irony Idi Amin pulled Uganda out of the 1976 Olympics because New Zealand played rugby in South Africa.Even in 2004 the Aust govt was sort of trying to stop the Aust Cricket team from touring Zimbabwe.Enough of politics as I was not really aware of politics when I saw Personal Best in the early 1980's. I was aware of my attraction to girls and in Mariel there is one of the most beautiful as well as the capacity to admire athletic bodies , male & female, both on the track and in the locker room.

As flawed as it might seem, and as much as Mariel Hemingway's body may have been exploited in the interest of box office sales... This was a very important movie for me and many girls my age. It was the first movie we ever saw that let us know that we weren't the only girls in the world who liked other girls. And it showed us that this could be beautiful and that we weren't freaks. For that it will always hold a special place in my heart. And the same goes for many other lesbians around my age.

The best part of this film is you get a look at Eugene, Oregon, the mecca of track and field in the early 1980s. Mariel Hemingway is pretty convincing as a pentathlete. She is tall, very fit and moves with much of the grace of a hurdler. Of note is that most of the others in this film, with the exception of Scott Glenn were actual world-class athletes. Jane Fredrick and Kate Schmidt were top women and Al Feuerbach was a champion shot-putter. Kenny Moore, who plays Hemingway's male love-interest is cast as a water polo player. In reality Moore, who does a very good job finished 4th in the Olympic Marathon, was numerous events, but was cursed with running at the same time as Frank Shorter (has a bit part playing a TV announcer). Moore was also a frequent contributor for Sports Illustrated. This is not a genre-defining movie (if there is a genre of this type), but it is quite watchable and gives one a hint of the life of track athletes in the era before they were allowed to be paid above the table.