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Personal Best
Directed by
Robert Towne
R
1982
2h 4m
Drama
,
Sport
6.3
74%
53%
5.9
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The intertwined lives and loves of three highly ranked athletes striving for the national team; Chris bounces between the beds of male coach Terry and her female friend, competitor, and role model Tory.
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Where to Watch Personal Best
Amazon Video
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Cast of Personal Best
Mariel Hemingway
Chris Cahill
Patrice Donnelly
Tory Skinner
Scott Glenn
Terry Tingloff
Kenny Moore
Denny Stites
Jim Moody
Roscoe Travis
Kari G. Peyton
Penny Brill
Jodi Anderson
Nadia "Pooch" Anderson
Maren Seidler
Tanya
Martha Watson
Sheila
Emily Dole
Maureen
Pam Spencer
Jan
Deby Laplante
Trish
Mitzi McMillin
Laura
Jan Glotzer
Karen
Jan Van Reenen
Yelovitch
Allan Feuerbach
Zenk
Jane Frederick
Fern Wadkins
Cindy Gilbert
Charlene Benveniste
Marlene Harmon
Pam Burnside
Linda Waltman
Debbie Floyd
Personal Best Ratings & Reviews
Associated Press
Bob Thomas
The leads are convincingly athletic, the characters well drawn.
San Francisco Chronicle
Peter Hartlaub
[Robert] Towne's direction can be frustrating - at one point Donnelly and Hemingway run up a sand dune for what seems like five minutes - but the result is 50 percent more realistic than the average sports film.
Washington Post
Pamela Kessler
But "Personal Best" only jogs along sometimes: It suffers from fleshing out.
People Magazine
People Staff
Producer-director-screenwriter Robert Towne has fallen dismally short of his own personal best.
Film Comment Magazine
Chuck Stephens
Which horrible Eighties haircut to choose? Regardless, you'll be rewarded with some of the most startling and texturally stunning American cinema of that largely barren zone shortly thereafter to be known as the Reagan era. Score!
Boston Globe
Bruce McCabe
Robert Towne's Personal Best is a flashy, hip and quite fascinating investigation into the arduous process of working out sexual identity in today's narcissistic society and culture.
The New York Review of Books
Veronica Geng
Personal Best has a quality rare in movies now: ambition worn lightly. This looks like a small, simple movie, but it's hardly modest.
ColeSmithey.com
Cole Smithey
[VIDEO] Although screenwriter Robert Towne's directorial debut fell largely on deaf ears when it was released in 1982 "Personal Best" remains a powerful examination of high-stakes female athletes during the late '70s...
MovieMartyr.com
Jeremy Heilman
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.
TIME Magazine
Richard Schickel
Personal Best is likable precisely because it is so unembarrassed.
Variety
Variety Staff
Towne has a love of slow motion that's employed as if he's afraid you might miss one, rippling muscle. Worse than that, when people aren't exercising, they are often talking about exercising.
Movie Metropolis
John J. Puccio
There's no questioning its authenticity.... However, the movie tends to make its points early and then repeat itself unnecessarily.
Chicago Sun-Times
Roger Ebert
This is a very physical movie, one of the healthiest and sweatiest celebrations of physical exertion I can remember.
New York Times
Vincent Canby
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.
rec.arts.movies.reviews
Dragan Antulov
Hemingway excels in a difficult and risky role.
Movie Mom
Nell Minow
One of the best movies ever about competition, with wonderfully natural performances.
Chicago Reader
Dave Kehr
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.
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