After deviating away from DCOM's for Disney Week over the past couple of weeks I thought it was time to go back and cross another one off the list. We've had hockey, we've had baseball, we've had swimming, this week it's all about Bowling, with Alley Cats Strike! Another Sports Coming Of Age Drama. Although to be honest, despite the absolute transparency of these movies, I've genuinely enjoyed most of them. On almost every occasion they have been incredibly formulaic, but unenjoyable, no. So let's see if this weeks choice brings anything different to the table.
After the sporting college factions of West Appleton and East Appleton decide that the only way to settle a tie breaker in their competition to keep the prestigious and historical Mighty Apple Trophy is over a game of bowling. Current college bowling team; Alex Thompson (Kyle Schmid), Elisa Bower (Kaley Cuoco - don't think she ever went on to do anything...), Ken Long (Joey Wilcots) and Delia Graci (Mimi Paley) are joined by college hero and goldenboy; Todd McLemore (Robert Ri'chard) when it transpires he was signed up for Bowling class as a joke by his pals. Thrust into a sport he despises, Todd is immediately and obviously so massively out of his depth, having never bowled in his life, but is too proud, or arrogant to accept any help from the other 4. Reaching out to Todd, in the hope that winning the competition will help save his Dad's Bowling Alley, which is struggling to make ends meet, Alex extends the olive branch but Todd is still frosty about accepting his help, although he does bring Alex along to popular girl; Lauren's (Laura Vandervoort) party where Todd discovers he is massively out his depth... but seems to win over some friends. The following day after with Todd still refusing help and sucking terribly, and Todd's Dad, and Mayor, Jeff McLemore (Tim Reid) visiting the team and putting even more pressure on them to win the tiebreaker, Todd makes the decision to go scout the competition, with Alex being the only other member of the team who makes the decision to join him. Whilst there they learn that not only is East Appleton's Team really good at Bowling but they have an Ex-Pro coaching them. However when Alex's cover gets blown and the East Appleton team find out he's spying on them, Todd wades in to save the day and the pair begin to bond with Todd finally agreeing to let Alex coach him. As the team and Todd begin to warm to each other, Todd agrees to help them make the Bowling Alley a party destination with a view to increasing business, using his popularity to help, he launches the weekly "Bowling Ball" party. And as Alex and Todd's friendship begins to bloom, it drives a wedge between Alex and the rest of the Bowling quartet, who still feel reluctant to let Todd into their circle. At the inaugural Bowling Ball party, Alex definitely seems to revel in his newfound popularity, which does nothing to improve relations, but at the end of the night, Alex learns that behind his back, the rest of the popular crowd are only tolerating him in hopes the Bowling team will bring home the trophy. Alex emotions finally come to a head when he learns that the winner of the Bowling game will not only get the trophy but also naming rights to the new school, merging the East and West, and venting that it has become more about winning and less about Bowling, he quits the team. After an impassioned speech from Todd, who recognizes that he is all about winning when the others are all about bowling, he begins to win his teammates over and convinces Alex to rejoin the team, with a bit of help from Alex's dad who laments that him and Mayor McLemore were once in the same situation and it drove a wedge between them. On the day of the big game, both teams are neck and neck until Todd misses a 7-10 split and East Appleton takes the lead, but due to some complex Bowling scoring that I confess to not really understand, West Appleton can take lead if they can bowl 3 straight strikes, with Alex nailing all 3 confidently, but they are pinned back... no pun intended, when the East equally bowls 3 clean strikes and it falls down to Todd to bowl a spare or more to win the game. Todd, horrendously nervous, steps up but leaves himself with another 7-10 split - his boogey pairing. Feeling the pressure he confesses to his team that he can't make the shot, but Delia, confident that she can steps in as a substitution to take it on, despite Mayor McLemore's protestations. Stepping up, rather than bowling the actual ball, Delia chooses instead to spin the ball and let it roll down the aisle slowly, but gradually, creating incredible tension as the rest of her team watches on. But her tactics work, causing the 7 pin to spin and take out the 10 pin, winning West Appleton the game. But in the closing scene, both sides come together and determine that the school should represent both, settling on the name: Appleton Central.
This was a different one this time around. Not to say it wasn't enjoyable, because it was but unlike most of the other DCOM's that I've watched before now, the character depth didn't feel as fleshed out here, and the plot was kept very basic. I wouldn't say thinly spread as such, it just felt like there wasn't alot of it. The whole thing sort of focused on Todd - the outsider coming in and learning that he didn't have to be the apple of his Dad's eye, whilst sort of focusing on Alex and Alex learning some life lessons of his own, but it wasn't really explored in that much depth, and the other x3 members of the team were supplementary at best. I thought there might have been some development of a kind of romance between Alex and Elisa but uh.. nope. Nothing there. It was... odd... because it was enjoyable enough, but it was a kind-of throwaway movie. More a love letter to Ten Pin Bowling than an actual focus on a coming of age tale?
Acting wise it was hard not to be distracted by a very young Kaley Cuoco who will obviously go on to be in uh... much bigger things. I am not a Big Bang Theory fan, but shades of her Penny character were obvious in her role here. Aside from that, the standout for me was Robert Ri'chard who was maybe just a little bit overenthusiastic in his role, but generally weathered it well and was decent, upstaging Kyle Schmid who was supposed to be the lead but slipped into more of a secondary character. Not that he was sub-par in comparison, he did just fine, but I felt he was upstaged somewhat here by Robert Ri'chard.
Productionwise, Cinematographywise, Soundtrackwise, everything was pretty much competent here as you would expect from a Disney production really although this did feel like an extended episode of a TV show more than it felt like an actual movie, which has cropped up before now with DCOM productions. But it still retained enough individuality about it to stand alone as it's own movie I guess but I felt very much like it was produced like a TV show episode would be produced and it lacked that sort of cinematic polish and movie approach that would have defined it more as a movie. But again, this is something I've encountered before with DCOM productions.
And as I mentioned earlier, the plot did feel fairly unsubstantial. The whole thing launched with a focus on the Bowling game, there was the build up to the Bowling game and then it happened. There wasn't much in the way of character development, or role definition pipped inbetween. There was moments which helped to establish how the relationship between the characters was developing but individually they were never really fleshed out. I did like the twist at the end where neither of the 2 central characters took the glory of winning the tournament and it instead came down to team and tactics, that was at least different, but it was difficult to have any kind of emotion for Delia's character as she had barely featured up until the last 5 minutes? Some more development would have helped form some kind of bond to the characters and strengthened the underlying message to the movie.
But otherwise, this was a mostly enjoyable, if not mostly unremarkable movie. It's probably never going to leave an indelible mark on anyone that might watch it, and I genuinely feel you'd have trouble recalling what it was called if you had to talk about it weeks and months later. This was definitely a schedule filler and nothing much really beyond that, which is a bit of a shame as when they get these things right, The Thirteenth Year for example, it can really transcend beyond being just another made for TV movie and instead hold status on it's own merits. But this was very much just a made for TV movie that killed 1 hour 30, had a kind of vaguely positive moral undercurrent to it and does just enough to be entertaining but completely light and effortless to watch. Strong 2 out 5.
