Fast Break

1979 sports comedy

Rating: 12/20

Plot: A New York City deli clerk with aspirations of being a head basketball coach at the college level lands himself a job at an unknown college in Nevada. He's got no scholarships to offer and makes only about 60 bucks per victory, but he's promised a lucrative three-year coaching contract if he can beat Nevada State, a perennial college basketball powerhouse. He assembles a ragtag team of street ballers and starts whipping them into shape.

There are classic sports comedies. You've got Keaton's College or Harold Lloyd's The Freshman from the silent era, and modern ones like Slap Stick or Major League or The Bad News Bears. Or the often-hilarious Field of Dreams. And there are a bunch that people think are good but actually aren't. This one's a little different because the team, while it's filled with underdogs, is never really an underdog. They blow away everybody from their first game together. The team's made up of a thuggish criminal (of course with a heart of gold), a preacher who knocked up a 15-year-old, a pool hustler, and a women, the latter played by Mavis Washington in her only role. They're interesting characters, but there's not really enough time to develop them. They've all got mad hoop skills, too, and so does cut-off-jean-shorted Gabe Kaplan, the reason I watched this movie in the first place. Kaplan's good, sort of a poor man's Billy Crystal, and I'm still surprised he didn't have more of a career. He's got a great voice and inflection, and everything he says just feels completely natural. There's a rhythm to his dialogue in this, and his character's easy to like and root for. The story in this is actually a little less predictable than you'd think for something like this although it will probably all end up exactly like you think it would. For a comedy, it's not exactly outrageously hilarious, but there are a few funny moments, like when a character instructs another to "put on some black music" before the latter plays the Mills Brothers or a scene featuring a lot of marijuana. Oh, and look who did the score for this thing--David "Fucking" Shire. That guy was ubiquitous in the late 70's.