Diving In (1990)
A high school diver fights his fear of heights and diving to get onto the team. He gets onto the team, only to find that he must dive the high platform in order to compete. His problems are further compounded by social issues out of the pool. His sister is being taken advantage of by the local tough-guy, and his coach writes him off as a loser. To aid in his overcoming of his phobia, he enlists in a previous women's olympic coach, whom he falls for and crosses the line between business and pleasure. During his training with the new coach, he experiences a bad diving accident and is warned not to dive in the championship. He ignores these warnings, and enters the competition.
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Highly Overrated But Still Good
One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.
It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,
The back of the box equates the plot to the Karate Kid, and that's exactly what it is. Adler plays Wayne Hopkins, a kid on the swim team who wants to become a diver, except he has a fear of heights. Hopkins thinks that to defeat his fear of diving, means he can also conquer other fears, like that of the rival diver on his team and his gang of braindead lackees. Burt Young, who plays the boy's diving coach doesn't want to train Hopkins, he wants to stick with his star because he's sure that this kid is going to qualify as an Olympic diver. Hopkins goes for the former Olympic diver who now coaches the girls swim team for help, and she helps him out. And blah...blah...blah...persistence saves the day.Okay, so overall the movie is kind of lame. The plot of the whimpy kid struggling for a few weeks and attaining his goal, beating the crap out of his rivals, has been done so many times ad nauseum. Its the Karate Kid, its Vision Quest, its Youngblood, and so on and so forth...and oddly much of this theme is prevalent in the 1980s. However, I checked out this movie because Matt Adler (the guy who plays Lewis in Teen Wolf) is the lead, Wayne Hopkins. He was in another movie called North Shore, which is about this kid from the wave tank in Arizona who goes to Hawaii to become some great surfer that surfs in the Pipeline Classic (with an added subplot of bitter rivals and the beautiful girl). This movie is another sports cliche/Romeo and Juliet theme, but hey, it is a lot more exciting than this film and plus, its got great photography. So, when you're in the video store because I doubt cable television runs anything good or rare anymore...think diving in...or north shore...eeeny meeny miney mo...and then go for North Shore, a more appreciable, though somewhat lame, Adler film.