Youngblood (1986)

I know nothing about hockey but managed to learn a few things from watching this formulaic sports story.One is that a goalie has to be extremely supple. He must be able to do splits comfortably. And there is an unsettling scene towards the end, just before Rob Lowe's penalty shot, when the goalie of the enemy team (that's the proper term) extends one ugly padded leg in one direction and kneels on the other, then slithers slowly back and forth in front of the net like a dangerous eel or serpent. He also apparently gets to wear a mask as threatening as he likes -- skulls, a mass of stitches, any design will do.Another thing I learned is that hockey isn't all speed and skill with the stick. The teams, the referees, the coaches, the fans, are all allowed to stand back and not interfere with two players who have decided to duke it out, first with sticks, like Medieval jousters, then with bare fists like kids in a junior high school playground. The fight can last a long time, until one of the combatants hits the dirt, or rather the ice.There's nothing much new about the plot. Lowe is a natural talent on the ice but must quit for a time during his rise to celebrity in order to overcome some personal demons and then return to become the star he was always destined to be.He's only seventeen years old and gets hazed when he joins the Mustangs. But he makes a friend too, Patrick Swayze, who tells him that nothing, absolutely nothing, compares to playing in the rink. I figured Swayze at once for a paralyzing C-spine injury that would turn him into a mummy from the neck down. I almost got it right.Then there's Racki, an ugly name for a gargantuan enemy player given to smashing members of the other team and playing dirty. I figured Lowe would wind up beating him to a pulp. Bingo.Then there's Cynthia Gibb as the daughter of Lowe's manager, Ed Lauter. Lauter doesn't like the team even looking at her. But how could anyone not? She was a model at fourteen and is now the cutest, cleanest face on the screen since Sandra Dee, but less debauched than Sandra Dee always appeared, what with her Bayonne accent.Gibbs' Dad and Gibbs' own reluctance to have her date a team member are soon overcome. The obstacle is perfunctory. We've already seen Lowe's manly chest and buns of steel, which are pretty revolting, but we get the merest glimpse of Cynthia Gibbs' far more graceful nudity. She can't act but it doesn't matter because Lowe can't act either. That doesn't stop them from being beautiful people.Patrick Swayze, on the other hand, gives a convincing performance as an experienced player. I've always admired Swayze, a dancer, singer-songwriter, horse breeder, who trained at the Joffrey Ballet -- and was from Texas. Died a way we don't want to die.Best performance award goes to -- envelope, please -- Eric Nesterenko as Lowe's Dad. It's not a bravura performance. It's a reassuring one. He has the same sympatico quality on screen that Richard Farnsworth once had, or that Werner Herzog has now. If I were to spill the beans to someone, I wouldn't mind if the listener were someone like Nesterenko. Of course that's his screen persona. In real life he may get his kicks pulling the wings off flies.This isn't any masterpiece of film making. You can pretty readily call the shots. But it's better than I'd expected it to be, which may or may not be saying much since my expectations were pretty low to begin with.

Rob Lowe is way too much the matinée idol type to ever be believable as a hockey player. In fact that's the story of Youngblood, that of a player who values his looks a lot more than mixing it up on the ice to help win a game.Try as I might I just can't see Rob Lowe as a hockey player, even one who won't get down and dirty. He's a speedy fellow on the ice and it's his speed that gets him a berth on a Canadian minor league hockey team, on which he has teammates like Patrick Swayze and Keanu Reeves. The best scene in the film is where Rob Lowe gets literally raped by the unofficial landlady of the team, Fionula Flannagan. Apparently she gets first dibs on all the new hockey players in helping them keep their equipment in working order. Considering before Lowe, she had both Swayze and Reeves, I'd say she's quite the mechanic.Rob has a more serious involvement with Cynthia Gibb who is the daughter of Coach Ed Lauter. But she's also daddy's little girl which doesn't help matters.Our Canadian reviewers say that Youngblood is a gross distortion of Canadian hockey. I'm in no position to comment, but I've seen enough to know that it's a sport where violence is the norm and if you can't mix it up and are not willing to risk your good looks, you won't last too long.Youngblood is now 23 years old and assuming Rob Lowe's character had a decent sized playing career, I guarantee that Rob today would not look like the fellow who worked for President Martin Sheen in the West Wing.

The inconsistency was just too much for me to take.Sadly I must admit that one of the most realistic parts of the film was the tequila scene - been there / done that.For me, the whole film was spoiled by the refereeing decision at the end! When a penalty shooter plays the puck with his skate he has lost control - shot over - no goal!Caught between taking itself too seriously and not seriously enough this was just too disappointing. There was not enough humour (see Slapshot or Happy Gilmour), critique (The Deadliest Season or Net Worth), escapism (The Mighty Ducks or Mystery Alaska), documentary (Summit on Ice), realism (Gross Misconduct), romance (Love Story).

Being Canadian and playing competitive hockey for most of my life, I have to say there are a lot of realism's to the movie but the premise is one of the things that is lacking. In my experience Major Junior teams that are going into the league final do not have try-outs the week before. A player as skilled as Youngblood would most certainly have been noticed earlier and should already been playing, especially with an older brother that played before him. All in all this is probably my favorite all time movie and the little things that aren't realistic really don't matter. Rob Lowe, Patrick Swayze, Keanu Reeves and the rest of the cast did an excellent job learning and portraying hockey players.