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Personal Best (1982)
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Reviews Counted:22
Fresh:16
Rotten:6
Average Rating:6.4/10
Consensus: Mariel Hemingway has a career-making star turn in this highly physical drama about two Olympic athletes who find each other during competitive training.
Runtime: 2 hrs 9 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Two highly competitive female athletes discover erotic feelings for each other as they train for the Olympics.
Starring: Mariel Hemingway, Scott Glenn, Patrice Donnelly, Kenny Moore
Starring: Mariel Hemingway, Scott Glenn, Patrice Donnelly, Kenny Moore
Director: Robert Towne
Director: Robert Towne
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Reviews for Personal Best
An unusual subject to get the Hollywood treatment though, and as such it should be commended, while Hemmingway is always worth catching.
The characters have a fullness and vitality rare in American films of that period, but Towne has so much trouble establishing information visually that the film emerges as choppy, confused, ill-proportioned.
This is a very physical movie, one of the healthiest and sweatiest celebrations of physical exertion I can remember.
There's no questioning its authenticity.... However, the movie tends to make its points early and then repeat itself unnecessarily.
A frank, honest portrayal of the sacrifices of Olympic-caliber athletes. it is tough and uncompromising.
One of the best movies ever about competition, with wonderfully natural performances.
It's a quintessential girl's coming-of-age story, and writer/director Robert Towne saw that Hemingway's uncanny ability to play both impressionable and stubborn, ingenuous and ambitious, naive and wise, was perfectly suited to this drama.
Endowed with remarkable performances, superb photography, and a clear vision of what matters to its characters, Personal Best is an underappreciated gem in a genre full of filler.
Unless you're fascinated by all of the prettified slow-motion footage of Chris, Tory and the other women athletes, your eye is likely to wander to your watch long before the end.
A robust and adventuresome film that is both tough and sentimental in its portrait of Olympic grade women athletes.
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