Semi-Tough

This comedy is based on Dan Jenkins's novel about two good-old-boy pro football players (Burt Reynolds and Kris Kristofferson). Best friends on the field and off, they're also friendly competitors in the arena of love for the same woman (Jill Clayburgh), who happens to be the daughter of their team's owner. Directed by Michael Ritchie, who was something of a poet of films about competition in the 1970s and early 1980s, this movie has a certain shaggy charm, abetted by Reynolds's knowing way with a one-liner. If Semi-Tough doesn't seem to go much of anywhere, it still has a good time getting there. The best moment is a send-up of an est-like self-actualization program, with the late Bert Convy as a wonderfully smarmy stand-in for Werner Erhard. --Marshall Fine