'Semi-Tough' - Movie Review

A movie about two professional football players, Billy Clyde and Shake (Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson), and their female roommate and best friend Barbara Jane (Jill Clayburgh). Set when it was shot, in 1977. When Barbara Jane returns from a trip to Africa, she finds Shake has taken a self-improvement course that's made him more assertive and charismatic, and she falls for him. As she's falling for Shake, Billy Clyde begins to realize he wants Barbara Jane. This is all set against a background of sports buffoonery and mockery of self-help gurus.

The movie is extraordinarily foul-mouthed for its period. The poster suggests it's a sexploitation flick, but it doesn't even manage that. There are a couple of good jokes, a spectacular racist slur that's meant as a joke but totally couldn't fly in 2020, and a trio of unpleasant people at the centre of the film stumbling through a badly plotted mess.