Fast Break movie review & film summary (1979)
Kaplan takes the job, even though his wife decides to stay in New York. He recruits four black kids to form the nucleus of his new team, and they head West in a station wagon.
One of the kids seems a little strange to the rest of the guys, and gets the nickname "Swish." The truth, wouldn't you know, is that Swish is a girl ... a fact I would not reveal if the movie's ads didn't announce it in large type.
Cadwallader is a fourth-rate cow college with a president who's convinced that a winning team can put it on the map. And the sport should be basketball, he reasons, because it's cheaper, takes less in the way of uniforms, can be played indoors, and so on. The movie quickly settles down to its formula: Each of the kids has his problems, and the coach helps work them out while concealing big problems of his own. As movies like this go (and they all go the same way), the problems will simultaneously arrive at the crisis stage during the Big Game - and during the fourth quarter, of course, with Cadwallader a few points behind.
The trouble is, we've seen this formula so many times before that there can be no surprises, except for some small suspense about when the foreordained events will take place. The movie never seems quite sure, either, whether it's a comedy or a "human drama," and so we get heavy scenes (the coach leaving his wife, the girl player revealing her secret to a would-be suitor) and then lightweight ones (the opposing coach is hustled at pool). No tone is set for the film; each sequence seems to start out in a new direction.
Gabe Kaplan does an OK job as the coach. He's engaging, off the wall, likable. His role is so close to what he does on Welcome Back, Kotter, though, that we almost wonder why he didn't just play Kotter. He's an interesting actor, filled with energy, possessed of an offbeat comic timing. He'd be good in something a little more challenging, but then challenges seem to be what "Fast Break" was designed to avoid.
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