Lea Thompson Movie:

Editorial Review:
The only way football star Stefan Djordjevic (Tom Cruise) will avoid a life in the blast furnaces of his bleak Pennsylvania hometown is by winning a college scholarship. Even his coach (Craig T. Nelson) dreams of parlaying a winning team into a college job far away from this graveyard of the American Dream. But it's not long before the two virtually ruin each other's chances for escape and their door to the future starts to close. Lea Thompson and Christopher Penn co-star.

Description of All the Right Moves:
Most films about high school football players usually fall into one of two categories: glossy jock romance or locker-room sex farce. This one defies the odds and scores both as decent character study and decidedly unsentimental sports melodrama. It's not only a helluva coming-of-age yarn, but also, like Paul Newman's Slapshot, it's a bracing look at the hopes and dreams of blue-collar survivors. Tom Cruise plays a mill-town football star determined to escape the same traps that ensnared his parents. Craig T. Nelson, in a terrific villain role, is the coach who takes revenge when Cruise's ambitions drift a little too close to home. Michael Chapman, Martin Scorsese's favorite cinematographer, made his directorial debut with this gritty little winner, which benefits from being shot on location in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and which is set to a great Jennifer Warnes-Chris Thompson theme song. Lea Thompson and Christopher Penn co-star. In 1983, another Cruise vehicle had even better moves: Risky Business. --Glenn Lovell

All the Right Moves Reviews:
All the Right Moves
2009-10-28 - This movie was also a little slow. What was interesting is the fact that a coach would try and blackball a player from going to college.

All the right moves
2009-10-06 - Sent the movie to a grandson. He needed to see the message in this movie.

Just a Cruise film for teenagers
2009-05-28 - The Polish kid in a steal town wants to get out by playing football
and become an engineer.
There are sex scenes with Lea Thompson, besides drama with the coach,
but it just isn't a very original
or inspiring film ( Cruise did sport films better later?).

There once was a crooked man on a crooked path
2008-01-22 - Now approaching mid-life, this is one of the films that I grew up with. This film was especially touching for me due to the fact that about the time this film came out, I was heading off to college. In truth, at the time I mostly enjoyed this film for the famous, or perhaps infamous nude scene between Tom Cruise and Lea Thompson. Such as it is with most teenagers. As I grew older I developed a deeper appreciation for the story, beyond that one scene. All the Right Moves is a good title, but doesn't really fit the film, as the characters of the film, as in real life, make choices that are not always the best. Like most of us, the characters land on their feet like the cats we covet despite choices and circumstances. Overall this is a good film to recommend for the young adult. This film can be viewed by the pre-teenager, but older persons should be around to discuss any questions viewers might have. Thus the rating, average. It's not the perfect classic, but a classic never-the-less.

entertaining but conflict is resolved too easily
2007-09-21 - This is a fairly formulaic film with a synthesizer-based soundtrack, quite common in the 1980s. It's entertaining enough, with a small-town guy trying to find a way out of the stifling environment and the seemingly lackluster future if he stays. Of course he has a love interest, a coach he clashes with, and dreams of college.
The problem is this: the ending is quite anticlimactic, with the coach relenting and finally granting a scholarship to the fellow, apparently because the fellow's girlfriend guilted the coach into doing so. This all happens in the last few minutes, so it's really more of a deus ex machina than a true resolution.