\u201cLoved the money, hated the movie,\u201d wrote Jenkins in His Ownself: A Semi-Memoir<\/em>, a paragraph later clarifying, \u201cI didn\u2019t hate the movie as much as I got tired of looking for Semi-Tough<\/em> on the screen.\u201d Indeed, scrapping an author-approved screenplay by Ring Lardner, Jr. and rewriting the script with Walter Bernstein, Ritchie released one of the more doggedly unfaithful adaptations of a popular novel. Some fans considered it treasonously disloyal, (\u201ca worthless hunk of celluloid,\u201d according to John Schulian\u2019s fire-breathing review<\/a> in the Chicago Daily News<\/em>) but others, less enamored of Jenkins\u2019s writing \u2014 this critic in particular thinks the novel is puerile garbage \u2014 find something beguiling in the movie\u2019s offbeat rhythms and the airy, almost European sensibility with which it approaches such a distinctly American game. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson star as Billy Clyde Puckett and Shake Tiller, star players of an unidentified Miami football franchise in a league that\u2019s never mentioned by name, because even though in 1977 the NFL was far from the billion-dollar corporate juggernaut it is today, one assumes they were still plenty protective of their brand. These two are constantly clowning around with Jill Clayburgh\u2019s Barbara Jane Bookman, their roommate, childhood friend, and daughter of the team\u2019s eccentric owner Big Ed (played by Robert Preston as one of cinema\u2019s less-convincing Texans). The squad is rounded out with colorful cartoon characters like a looming brute played by Brian Dennehy and Ron Silver\u2019s cryptic Eastern European placekicker, who doesn\u2019t speak a word of English. Life on the road is a free-floating bacchanal of pranks, groupies, and booze for this crew, but lately Shake\u2019s been yearning for something more substantial.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The shaggy-haired philosopher of the team has fallen in with the BEATs, a self-improvement group modeled on the EST encounter seminars created by Werner Erhard that were all the rage for a while back in the \u201870s, and can probably be easiest explained by trying to imagine Scientology\u2019s less scary cousin. Shake\u2019s pledged himself to a guru played with marvelous malevolence by TV game show host Bert Convy as a man who responds to every query with such confident non-answers it takes a few minutes to realize he isn\u2019t saying anything at all. (Convy\u2019s hyper-aggressive seminars in Semi-Tough<\/em> are clearly an inspiration for Tom Cruise\u2019s Frank T.J. Mackey in Magnolia<\/em>.) This new consciousness has gotten Shake all shook up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The best part of the movie is the easy, loopy chemistry between Reynolds, Kristofferson, and Clayburgh, playing a cheerfully childish trio who have lived together for so long they can practically finish each other\u2019s bawdy jokes. But this time when Barbara Jane moves back into their shared apartment after yet another divorce, the balance is suddenly disrupted. She finds herself attracted to this new, spiritually centered Shake. (It doesn\u2019t hurt that he\u2019s played by Kristofferson, who at the time seemed constitutionally opposed to wearing shirts.) For the first time in their lifelong friendship, Reynolds\u2019 Billy Clyde finds himself to be the third wheel, staring down a \u201cdo not disturb\u201d sign on their adjoining hotel rooms\u2019 door. He\u2019s surprised by how jealous he is. A little hurt, even.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Reynolds coasted through so many lousy movies in gum-snapping, weisenheimer mode it\u2019s easy to forget what a deft performer he could be when he put his mind to it. Realizing too late that he\u2019s been in love with Barbara Jane all along, the actor layers in a touching sense of longing underneath Billy Clyde\u2019s antics. He wears heartache well. He\u2019s also got a real rapport with Clayburgh \u2013 they\u2019d work together again in Starting Over<\/em> two years later– even if she seems a touch too urbane for such an earthy role. (Schulian\u2019s review said she wasn\u2019t pretty enough for the part. Pig.) There\u2019s a lovely wistfulness to their scenes together, an innocence with which she asks him, \u201cWhy didn\u2019t we ever fuck?\u201d Audiences expecting The Longest Yard Redux<\/em> were no doubt surprised to see something more akin to Jules and Jim on the 30-Yard-Line<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ritchie keeps a polite distance from the novel\u2019s more notorious shenanigans. Football is a backdrop for the characters instead of the film\u2019s focus, and you\u2019ve never seen a SuperBowl treated so nonchalantly. Scenes like the one in which a heartbroken Buddy Clyde takes solace in the arms of an older, plus-sized groupie would be played for bad laughs in nearly any other film of the era, but are here infused with a subdued melancholy. All of the decadence that served as the book\u2019s selling point is presented as what these characters are so desperately trying to escape, which is why they\u2019re all clinging to New Age cults and crackpot therapies. (A very funny press conference finds an opposing team captain played by Carl Weathers more interested in proselytizing for his \u201cPyramid Power\u201d program than talking football.) <\/p>\n\n\n\n I honestly couldn\u2019t finish the book, which is narrated by Buddy Clyde with such a preponderance of n-words and other assorted epithets even Quentin Tarantino would tell him to take it down a notch. Jenkins had, shall we say, some struggles with racially insensitive comments throughout his career, and Ritchie was wise to whittle Billy Clyde\u2019s favorite word down to one single deployment in the film. (It\u2019s still indefensible, but at least used by Reynolds to shut down the condescending questions of a wealthy white gasbag treating him like some sort of zoo animal.) The film was a modest but profitable hit eclipsed by its leading man\u2019s other release that year, Smokey and the Bandit.<\/em> Jenkins channeled whatever frustrations he had with the adaptation into a follow-up book, Life Its Ownself<\/em>, following the further adventures of Billy Clyde, Shake and Barbara Jane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hollywood took another crack at Semi-Tough<\/em> in a 1980 sitcom<\/a> starring Bruce McGill, David Hasselhoff and Markie Post. It lasted four episodes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSemi-Tough\u201d is now streaming on <\/em>Amazon Prime<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/semi-tough-1024x576.jpg\")