Wimps

My review was written in November 1987 after watching the film on Lightning video cassette.

"Wimps" was filmed several months before the Steve Martin pic "Roxanne", but it is still wiped off the map by it. A modern-day version of Edmond Rostand's "Cyrano de Bergerac", Chuck Vincent's film plays like a score of the routine college-hijinks comedies.

Louie Bonanno, who previously played the same nerd role in Vincent's "Sex Appeal", plays Francis, a college freshman admitted to a jocks' fraternity because his dad was a football hero. When the college cracks down on academic requirements to head off a football scholarship scandal, Francis is forced to help all his frat brothers with their studies.

In particular, Francis is helping star quarterback Charles (Jim Abele) and reluctantly agrees to help him woo lovely librarian Roxanne (Deborah Blaisdell) in return for getting fixed up with a date (it turns out to be a prostitute). Ultimately, Franis finds out that Charles is merely after Roxanne to prove a point to his fellow jocks, who saw him rebuffed by her on their first meeting at the library. Of course, romance finally blooms between Francis and Roxanne at the finish.

Bonannonhas got the nerd routine down pat but brings little else to the film, obviously suffering by comparison with Steve Martin's bravura turn. Blaisdell, better known to Adult film fans as Tracey Adams, is pretty but overly bland, while Jane Hamilton (a/k/a Veronica Hart) steals a few scenes as the prostitute.