If you're thinking by the title that this movie is about rowdy football players binge drinking and going on panty-raids, than your half right. The jocks of Jocks are binge-drinkers, and are all about panty-raiding, but they happen to be a rag-tag tennis team. That's right, tennis is given the 80's underdog/party animal treatment in this xeroxed copy of about a hundred similar films from the era.
The movie begins with LA College dean Christopher Lee chewing out awesome character acotr R.G Armstrong because their school is slipping in the sports rankings. It will take all of their various teams firing on all cylinders to bring their average up. This includes the tennis team, the "pansies" as Armstrong calls them. When the dean orders star player, "the Kid" reinstated after a suspension, Armstrong pleads, "but their animals, their degenerates." So it's that kind of a movie.
When we meet "The Kid" his legs are dangling out the back of a rusted wrecker car as it squeals into the parking lot driven by some babe he bagged before passing out drunk. So far, so awesome. "The Kid" goes on to practice hung-over, hitting trick shots through his legs and showing that he's a super pro-star. "The Kid" is all about drinking hard, nailing broads and taking names on the tennis court. But he's just the focal point of a team, led by the coach played by Richard Roundtree, aka Shaft.
Here's the team:
The Kid - pro star lady killer
Tex - wears a cowboy hat in one scene, so you know "tex".
Jeff - teetotaler nerd
Andy - jerry-curled obligatory black guy played by Stoney Jackson
Ripper - this guy:
and Chito - who is Mexican. That is the extent of his character.
This wild and crazy bunch of tennis misfits travel to Las Vegas for some important tennis competition that all their scholarships are riding on. Of course they encounter two preppy douche bags that will stop at nothing to see that they lose. On a nerd-note, one of these preppy douche bags is played by a young Tom Shadyac, who went on to direct the comedy masterpiece Patch Adams.
Basically, this plays out exactly how you think with the misfits of LA College kicking ass on the tennis court by day and getting into hijinks at night, complete with lots of beer and lots of boobs. They even find time to punk on their nemesis R.G Armstrong by entrapping him with hookers and trannies.
The tennis matches are filmed in such a way that they don't draw a lot of attention to the fact that none of these actors could likely play tennis at a competative level. Most of the matches are quite boring, but one stands out. The LA College underdogs face off against their nemesis school and each player of the team is matched by an opponent that mirrors them exactly. The Kid plays their best player. Tex, who likes to throw his opponents off by wagering big money on matches, plays against a rich kid who doesn't blink at throwing down cash. Chito, who does a culturally-insensitive prayer before each match, is matched with an orthodox Jew. Ripper plays against a giant just like himself. And Stoney Jackson, who likes to pretend to be gay to throw his opponents off is matched with a flamingly gay player wearing lipstick. Stoney, who basically prances around in gay-face for the whole movie for some odd reason, proclaims "I'm getting beaten by a fag!" Oh, the 80's.
Jocks basically ruled from the moment it started right up to the end. It's hyped me up for the rest of the collection. For some reason these crappy b-grade teen movies are ageing well. In fact, they probably play better today than they did when they first came out. In the mid 80's, movies like Jocks were a dime-a-dozen plague at the multiplexes. They basically made the John Hughes fare seem like Bergman. But today, they work as hilarious time-capsules, and comforting escapes into simpler times.
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