This Coleslaw Archives: Coach (1978)

The following review is from Tucker's old blog This Coleslaw Makes Me Sick. In an attempt to simplify their web presence, Tucker, Jeff and other contributor's writings will be periodically transferred to the If We Made It Podcast blog. Of course the old blog still exists, but Tucker never looks at it and neither does anyone else.

Movie Review: Coach (1978)

Lovingly enjoyed by Tucker

There are certain conventions we expect to see when we enter a comedy with a simple plot that seems to promise little more than a few laughs and some naked flesh. I expected these conventions from Coach based only on the trailer and poster. And even though said conventions were there, I can't say they paid off, and I also can't say I was disappointed. This feature actually became the highlight of the film.
This movie has the plot of Wildcats without any of the structure, drama or comedy. Coach has so little to recommend it that I feel I must. The film follows an Olympic gold medalist named Randy Rawlings who is hired sight unseen because of her credentials and masculine name to coach a high school basketball coach. When she arrives the laughably sexist principal played by Keenan Wynn (Willard "Digger" Barnes to me and any other Dallas fans) attempts to put his foot down, but Randy makes a deal that he can fire her after the first game she loses. He accepts the challenge and tries to sabotage her. This is all well and good and in line with my expectations. This should play out in some cliched, yet pleasing way and the audience will go home satisfied. It doesn't.
Randy also falls for one of her players played by a young, baby faced Michael Biehn. They begin a love affair that includes a tryst in the boys shower room where they're almost busted by a custodian. This seems very in appropriate (and awesome) and we, the audience, just know they'll be found out and it will jeopardize her coaching duties, but eventually it will all work out somehow. That doesn't happen either. Instead this is a movie where no lessons are learned, there is no right from wrong and no rule that can't be broken, and just when you think the game is up, the movie ends. Pretty awesome.
There are a few boobs, the campfire song director Bud Townsend obviously has a hard-on for appears here and again in his own The Beach Girls, and a hypnotized white kid who apparently thinks black people are monsters. That's all I'll say for fear of ruining it for any interested parties. That, and there is a song about how kick-ass their high school is that plays over the climactic game that must be heard. I admit I laughed more at this movie as a whole than in individual spots, but it was definitely worth every minute.

Grade: F
Entertainment Value: B-

See Tucker's Coach review in its natural habitat: Coach!