On P List of Movie Reviews

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Personal Best (1982)

Rate: 4
Viewed: 12/15

PB
12/15: Personal Best can't decide whether it wants to be a track picture, a soft porno, or a film about two mixed-up women having lesbian feelings for each other.

Ultimately, it fails to be any of them. The acting show put on by the leads, Mariel Hemingway, Patrice Donnelly (who's more convincing as an athlete than Mariel), and Scott Glenn, has been mostly good, but their characters' repeated tendencies grow tiresome after a while. Mainly, it's due to the movie running too long which had been out of gas after an hour.

I like some scenes, most especially those of the complex relationship between athletes and their coach and the challenges female athletes go through in life, but the most daring of them all is the steamy stuff with naked but absolutely flat-chested female athletes. It underscores the honesty of real-life relationships. On the other hand, the track scenes are nice, but Leni Riefenstahl did it better in Olympia.

All in all, Personal Best fails to achieve what it set out for and feels voyeuristic more than anything else.