Rudolph the Red-Nosed Nympho

One on One (1977)

Rated: PG

Runtime: 98 minutes

Stars: Robby Benson, Annette O’Toole, G.D. Spradlin, Gail Strickland, Melanie Griffith

Director: Lamont Johnson

Plot: Henry Steele (Robby Benson) is a small town high school basketball star in Colorado who receives a scholarship (and a car) from Western University in Los Angeles; he’s short and likes the reverse layup. Janet Hays (Annette O’Toole) is a grad student, teacher’s assistant, Henry’s tutor, and dating a professor; she loves Captain Ahab and hates jocks. Coach Smith (G.D. Spradlin) is a bad teacher and gives up on his players too quickly. B.J. Rudolph (Gail Strickland) is the secretary to Coach Smith and a whole lot more we will get into later. Melanie Griffith is “the hitchhiker” and we never learn her name. Henry thinks he’s hot stuff, but he has a lot to learn on/off the court if he wants to succeed in basketball/life.

Rating—out of 5 basketballs: 0. I don’t understand why this movie is rated so high and why people like it so much.

Tournament seed: 16—movie makes the tournament only because it is an automatic qualifier. Has no chance of advancing. Avoid picking for any reason.

I’ll begin this review with a little nerd fact: it was written by the star of the movie Robby Benson. Which totally explains why it feels like it was written by a 17-year-old boy. Henry is awkward and not funny; but he picks up a hot hitchhiker (a very young Melanie Griffith), gets his ass pinched by the coach’s attractive secretary, gets the phone number of a pretty sorority girl, stumbles upon some girl at a party having what appears to be an orgasm on a bed, drives B.J. home from the party while she licks him and then … well proceeds to live up to her name, and then eventually scores his tutor. I remember when all of that happened to me in my first 2 weeks of college. This movie makes very little sense; Henry shouldn’t fit in. The entire team except for Henry looks 28; he thinks Arby’s, McDonald’s and Jack in the Box are fine restaurants; he loves his letter jacket more than Kevin Arnold loved his Jets jacket (yay Wonder Years reference!); and he drinks Coke at a party while everyone else is snorting it. But somehow everyone falls for him. Maybe it’s the sweet music of ‘70s super group Seals and Crofts (best known for their smash hit “Summer Breeze”, which unfortunately is not in this movie) scattered throughout. The dialogue has little to offer, with lines like “Hey I’m not an animal; I just came here to learn.” There is not much basketball action until the end. Everything is mostly shots of practices where Henry is taking a pill and getting so hyper he starts acting like a Globetrotter one minute, and then the coach making Henry do stupid drills hoping he will quit the next. The coach falls out of love with Henry about halfway through the movie and figures if he doesn’t let Henry travel with the team and only plays him when the team is ahead 110-41 with 2 minutes left, that Henry will agree to renounce his scholarship. Henry says no and, with the help of his tutor girlfriend and an awesome “working out” montage, Henry prepares himself for the nationally televised game. Everything comes together for Henry when one of his teammates fouls out and another hurts his ankle. Henry comes off the bench with his team down by 6 points with 4:50 left in the game, and takes over with an assortment of sweet jump shots and tricky passes. Down by 1 point with 4 seconds left, Henry steals the ball and the team calls a timeout. The coach draws up a play but when it breaks down Henry gets free underneath the basket and scores at the buzzer to win the game. He gets carried off the court by his team as the celebration erupts.

Coach Smith realizes that he has made a mistake giving up on Henry, so he tries to pretend that he was giving him tough love to make him a better person. Henry sees through this and tells the coach what he can do with Henry’s scholarship:

Henry: “All the way up with a red hot poker. I can play anywhere I want.” ;)*

* Yep, Henry totally winks at the coach after delivering this line.