Movie #76 - Youngblood

"The ice... The fire... The fight... To be the best."

There are only a handful of hockey movies out there, this being one of the better ones. Unfortunately, that doesn't really say much because of the fact that there aren't many good hockey movies - and sports movies in general.

Along with Youngblood, there are the Mighty Ducks trilogy, The Rocket, Mystery Alaska, The Cutting Edge, and of course Slap Shot. While many believe Slap Shot is one of the better films depicting sports out there, it still isn't a very good movie. It just became a cult classic with some of the funny quotes that you can extract from that film. Plus, Paul Newman really gives it his all in that movie.

Back to Youngblood, Rob Lowe portrays the title character - Dean Youngblood. He's a walk-on player that gets a chance to make it big playing for the fictional Hamilton Mustangs of the Ontario Hockey League. Its funny to see that this film is shot entirely in various places in Ontario, including a number of scenes shot in the "beautiful"city of Hamilton. What makes this film funny are the slow motion hockey scenes, probably because Lowe learned how to skate right before filming this movie... so they had to find a way to make him look faster than everyone else.

Swayze is also in this film, not previously playing hockey before, but professional trained as a figure skater in his youth. Look for cameos of Keanu Reeves as the Mustangs goaltender and of course, future NHLer's Peter Zezel and Steve Thomas.

In the end, Youngblood is a very bad film, which I still watch whenever its on television. But for what its worth, its great to see movies filmed in Canada. Also, this may rank in the top 5 of all-time hockey movies, but that doesn't say too much.