My wife is a fan of the late Patrick Swayze's work and as a surprise decided to get her a DVD of Roadhouse. The best deal was a double-disk set with Youngblood which neither of us had ever heard of.
Last night we watched it.
It's not very good. As I told her last night, I'll likely never watch it again unless I'm making fun of it with friends.
It is, however, a marvelous example of formulaic mid-80s filmmaking. The star is Rob Lowe, who plays the titular Youngblood – obviously that's his name, but he's also a rising sports star, a "young blood," as it were. Hah.
The sport in question is hockey, which makes it a little more interesting. Patrick Swayze plays an older team member who first torments but then helped Lowe. All is when, and then tragedy strikes, Swayze is injured, and Lowe must doing a synth-heavy training montage to save the team.
Oh, and there's a cute girl who likely thought this would be her breakthrough film but I never heard of her. She does a topless love scene with Lowe, which adds to the lingering sense of disappointment I felt for her.
As I've gotten older, I find such displays really distasteful. Given the attitudes of the time, they were widely regarded as normal verging on naughty, but in retrospect, that was just the avalanche of immorality in its early stage. That's probably fodder for a series of posts, so I'll just note that I'd have preferred the film without it.
In addition to Swayze and Lowe, Keanu Reeves has a bit part as a French-Canadian player, which I found amusing.
Chateau Lloyd 
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