Competitive high diving has been one of the few sports unexploited by Hollywood (unless one counts the climax of the 1986 Rodney Dangerfield comedy BACK TO SCHOOL). DIVING IN rectifies that oversight, and takes a full-gainer into an Olympic-sized morass of cliches.
Energetic young Wayne Hopkins (Matt Adler) has the right stuff to be a world-class diver--if only he can overcome a paralyzing fear of heights. Meanwhile Wayne and his cover-girl sister Terry (Kristy Swanson) suffer constant humiliation at the hands of Prescott High's bullying and popular star
diver Jerome Colter (Matt Lattanzi). Wayne decides that a guy's gotta do what a guy's gotta do, and he prepares for the regional Olympics platform tryouts. Gorgeous phys ed instructor Amanda Lanski (Yolanda Jilot) likes the kid's spirit, and her personal coaching rids Wayne of his acrophobia, in
one of the script's many unbelievable details. When romance blossoms between the pair, Amanda hands Wayne over to a more objective teacher, world-class diving trainer Richard Anthony (Richard Johnson), a kind of Yoda of the ten-meter board. As the finals draw near, Wayne contends with parental
opposition and the expected near-fatal injury before facing up to his Moment of Truth on the diving board before a statewide audience.
DIVING IN seems to take place in the same universe as all those dumb slasher movies, with stereotyped, nitwit kids who spend most of their time plotting pranks and paybacks on each other. But no mad killer lurks to slice up these characters; the viewer is stuck with such tiresome antics as the
trapped-in-the-girls'-shower motif, and the banal malice of Jerome and his black-jacketed gym mafia, a jock gang known as "The Talons." Things pick up mildly in the second half, when the athletic plot gets churning and eclipses the teen stuff. One is particularly grateful for the dropping of a
subplot-from-hell in which Wayne runs against the omnipresent Jerome for class president. (Prompting notable dialogue ... Wayne: "How can I beat Jerome? I'm just going to make a fool of myself." Terry: "I can help you!")
Adler and Lattanzi are earnest but interchangeable young hunks, the latter's major distinction being that he sports a Steven Seagal-style ponytail and is in real life the husband of pop star Olivia Newton-John. Burt Young portrays Jerome's gruff, cigarette-smoking, sixpack-toting coach, and it's
worth noting that Young appears throughout the ROCKY series, that locus classicus of sports spectacles. Stale as it is, the underdog formula works, but platform diving hardly lends itself to the KARATE KID philosophy of cinema. Strathford Hamilton previously practiced the craft of directing with
music videos, and it shows, but not as badly as one might dread. A few of the striking point-of-view diving shots would have looked most impressive on a theater screen; however, DIVING IN exhibited only briefly in 1990, surfacing the next year in the home-video marketplace. (Violence, profanity,
sexual situations, nudity.) leave a comment
