Hard Feelings

My review was written in July 1990 after watching the film on Monarch video cassette.

A lightweight precursor of the '80s teen rites of passage comedy genre, "Hang Tough" was filmed in 1980 but only now released in the USA as a direct-to-video title.

Film, previously titled "Hard Feelings" and "Sneakers", could be thought of as part of a parallel world of 20th Century Fox. Though eventually acquired for distribution by Moviestore, the Daryl Duke picture was made for "Porky's" banner Astral Bellevue Pathe and Joe Wizan, latter becoming Fox topper soon after. Its scripters W. D. Richter and John Herzfeld both helmed features for Sherwood and Fox in 1983 that were released by Fox.

Result here is in the same genre popularized by Bob Clark in "Porky's"" but far too tame. Carl Marotte heads a mixed Canadian/U. S. cast as a teen growing up in Long Island who longs to score, but his sex scenes with fast girl Stephanie Miller and good girl Lisa Langlois are a study in coitus interruptus: adults always arrive home early with unfunny results.

Overlong pic has two key subplots which are handled arbitrarily. Marotte is victimized by the school bully Vincent Bufano and even flees for Atlanta after Bufano kills his dog. There he strikes up a romance with free-spirited black student Charlaiine Woodard but soon returns home to pick up the makeout with Langlois. When Woodard visits relatives in Harlem, Marotte falls in love with her in earnest and even gets her brother Grand Bush to teach him how to handle the bully. Ending is pat and corny.

Black cast members Woodard and Bush sympathetically make the best impression as their whitebread counterparts led by Marotte are given paper-thin roles. Some vulgar dialog presages "Porky's" but is extremely mild by comparison.