One on One

I am especially fond of Annette O'Toole. She has a look in this movie that is almost mesmerizing. Some of her facial expressions are almost the definition of "cute". She is worth one of my 4 stars alone. Benson on the other hand was always one of those guys who you either wanted to have as your best friend or you wanted to beat up.

All in all the movies inside politics of college basketball holds up pretty good over the years. It certainly has held up better then movies like North Dallas Forty or Bang the Drum Slowly, which were much better movies at the time but are now woefully dated.


The worst basketball movie ever? No, not really.   September 19, 2003
Lawrance M. Bernabo (The Zenith City, Duluth, Minnesota)
Spike Lee has called "One on One" with Robby Benson the worst basketball movie of all time, although he recently amended his remarks to say that 1977 film is neck and neck with Whoopi Goldberg's "Eddie." Co-written by Benson and his father Jerry Siegel, fans of college basketball will recognize the basic scenario of this film as what if Pistol Pete Maravich had gone to U.C.L.A. and the Coach John Wooden had been to the right of Bobby Knight and tried to break the young phoneme of his hot dog ways. Benson plays Henry Steele, who leaves his small town where he was basically the greatest show on earth to attend Western University in Los Angeles (scenes were actually filmed at Moby Gym on the campus of Colorado State University). There he discovers that Coach Moreland Smith (G.D. Spradlin) is not the same smiling guy who came recruiting him when the team is practicing.

Benson could actually play basketball (i.e., make long shots and do some fancy dribbling moves), and there was actually some thought put into the game sequences. The film deals with the ugly underside of college basketball (Henry has a campus job that pays him for the automatic sprinklers coming on) and Smith is a wonderful martinet that you will not be able to stand, but the basketball side of the equation is not what is wrong with this film. The tagline for this movie was "There comes a time when love stops being a ball and starts being a woman" (I swear I did not make this up). As long as Henry is on the coach's good side going to class is not exactly a priority; but then Smith wants him gone and now the classes matter. Henry ends up with a tutor, Janet Hays (Annette O'Toole), who is rather surprised to find out the freshman is not a dumb jock. Now, I can believe that Henry Steele can come off the bench in the final moments of the climatic game to save the day, but I cannot believe that he wins his tutor's heart. I totally understand the impulse on his part, and certainly Janet's current boyfriend is a troglodyte, but Robby Benson was not that cute.

This is another one of those 3.5 star films where you round up if at the end you are thinking about the basketball plot and down if you you are thinking about the romance. I also think "Eddie" is much worse as a basketball movie, and I am not even a New York Knicks fan.


Feel good movie   July 11, 2003
Mike Lovett (Vidor, TX United States)
I saw this movie when it came out and thought it was a nice time capsule for the era. I went into college football, much as he did, small town to big time athletics and they tried to run me off also when I did not perform as they thought I should right out of high school. But I hung in there just like he did and made it to the starting lineup after the first year. So you can see I see what the story is about. I think everyone that likes sports and the seventies will love this story. He plays a great part. And the coach it your typical coach of the seventies. Reccommend it highly, watch it with your kids.


Laugh and feel good!   December 9, 2002
Clifford M. Huber (Irvine, CA United States)
Fun movie, excellent vehicle for displaying good values, integrity and persistance. One of the best movies I saw as a young adult. Please release on DVD soon...I'll buy a copy for every one of my friends who happened to see it with me back in '77!