Squeeze Play

Squeeze play is a slightly disappointing effort from, what was then an early TROMA team (It was their first financial success! Anyone who's seen one of there films will understand why)

It's about a group of guys who play softball, and after a while their girlfriends get sick of it, so they make an all girl softball team, and the challenge begins.

Obviously this movie sounds a bit tired, but the scene where the guy catches the ball with his butt is hysterical, and the surprise ending when the girls aren't even annoyed seems a bit unrealistic, but who cares? This is movie is supposed to be fun, and generally it is.

This is what you'd expect. It's a 1970's campy sexy comedy about a women's softball team that challenges a men's softball team to a battle of the sexes game. It's supposed to be empowering but obviously it's really just about all the T and A they can cram in. The women obviously decide to use their T and A to distract the other team etc. Like I said it's exactly what you think it will be. There's not tons of T and A but there's also not really much of a story other than the basics you expect to see.

Okay, let me be blunt: about two thirds of this movie just flat out sucks, and many of the ideas in it are done to death. But the things that are funny are work like a charm. It's one of the very few 80s sex comedies that actually snuck a joke or two in that weren't about gay people to go alone with the pale, not very attractive TA. The feminism seems, looking at what Troma did after this, kind of like lip service, but it's still better than most competition.

The plot is a bunch of softball players generally irritate their significant others, and they form a female softball team.

And the music is great.

I saw this movie a while ago with a group of friends at a party, and it was pretty funny then. It's light, mindless entertainment that complements some of the heavier, violent stuff that Troma produces. The soundtrack's awesome, and the story isn't something you see a lot of these days in sports comedies. The movie does a great job of including some feminist sentiments without preaching to its audience...there are still plenty of sweat-soaked t-shirts.

If you like Troma films, or like late-night 80s/sports comedy, this is a great choice. It's on Troma Comcast On-Demand this month--I'm thinking about watching it again!

"Squeeze Play" is a tedious, unfunny collection of throwaway scenes that seem almost unrelated to each other. It manages not one single character that stands out from an extra or a plank of wood, and no real narrative. It has an odd feminist focus, what with scenes of sexual harassment, and women getting revenge on their bullies. However, it of course features quite a bit of nudity, and culminates in a softball match between men and women, in which the women's side is called "the beaverettes", and gets the edge on their opponents by dressing in revealing attire, thus distracting them.

It also features godawful narration which adds nothing to our understanding of the movie's negligible story. The affected voice the narrator uses was irritating at first, and when he gets verbal diarrhoea toward the end of the film, I felt like the sound of his voice was giving me a migraine, it was so irritating.

Despite its undeniable badness, "Squeeze Play" is apparently Troma Studios' first success. My curiosity about any of the movies they made before this one, apparently not equal to them in terms of success, ends here.