There's one scene with Charles Durning where he is standing to the side, showing his girth, and indeed, this is the largest I've seen him in any film, greatly padded for several reasons. First is to make him seem imposing, and the second is to make him more of a villain and more dislikable. Durning, one of the great character actors of the last half of the 20th Century, played roles both loveable and despicable, here the later because he's the rival in a pinball tournament with 14 year old Brooke Shields.
While I grew up in the pinball era, I wasn't a massive fan, but appreciated the nostalgia seeing all the bells and whistles of the arcade. The late 70's atmosphere is fun (more interesting to me than the plot), yet the film is rather crude in many ways. Ken Marshall is charming as the young singer (who never sings) that Shields befriends while strengthening her game, but Don Stark is over-the-top and unappealing as his representative.
A cameo by Geoffrey Lewis with the dirty talking Shields is just plain creepy, and Johnny Crawford is totally wasted as a bartender who becomes her protector. Shields fortunately is not overly made up, but her character is a smart mouthed con obviously made to emulate Tatum O'Neal from "Bad News Bears". I found this rather generic and for the most part uninteresting, certainly not comical, and unfortunately giving Durning an undignified character to play, one you know will get humiliated. It's easy to see why that part was offered to Orson Welles who'd been playing those types of roles since the 50's. Lorenzo Lamas is wasted in a small part, but at least unlike "Grease", he has some lines.
While I grew up in the pinball era, I wasn't a massive fan, but appreciated the nostalgia seeing all the bells and whistles of the arcade. The late 70's atmosphere is fun (more interesting to me than the plot), yet the film is rather crude in many ways. Ken Marshall is charming as the young singer (who never sings) that Shields befriends while strengthening her game, but Don Stark is over-the-top and unappealing as his representative.
A cameo by Geoffrey Lewis with the dirty talking Shields is just plain creepy, and Johnny Crawford is totally wasted as a bartender who becomes her protector. Shields fortunately is not overly made up, but her character is a smart mouthed con obviously made to emulate Tatum O'Neal from "Bad News Bears". I found this rather generic and for the most part uninteresting, certainly not comical, and unfortunately giving Durning an undignified character to play, one you know will get humiliated. It's easy to see why that part was offered to Orson Welles who'd been playing those types of roles since the 50's. Lorenzo Lamas is wasted in a small part, but at least unlike "Grease", he has some lines.