This imaginatively titled TV-movie served as a showcase for what was then a phenomenon: curvy cheerleaders doing a poor man's Busby Berkeley-style routine on the football field at half-time and cheering the players (and fans!) through the game. Though other teams have since adopted their own versions of this (the Ben-Gals, for example, with the Cincinnati Bengals), at the time the title ladies were a red-hot commodity with mega-selling posters, appearances on "The Love Boat", etc.... Here, Seymour plays an undercover reporter sent to do a hatchet-job expose on the organization by her ex-boyfriend Convy, a high-profile publishing editor. She infiltrates the auditioning process and makes it to the finals, all the while hoping to dig up the all-important dirt to make the story sing when it's printed. Not surprisingly, she eventually begins to see the frosted, feathered, buxom babes as human beings with real hopes, dreams and feelings and she begins to have second thoughts. Meanwhile, several of the other ladies are having marital or boyfriend issues of their own. Den mother Stephens oversees the whole gaggle of women with a firm hand. Considering the subject matter, no one tuning in should be expecting "Long Days Journey Into Night" and, as light, cheesy fluff, the film manages to entertain to a point. Seymour is, of course, gorgeous, but her acting chops don't get much of a workout here. Her considerable ballet training does her no favors either as she tries to display the chops it takes to become a swinging, flailing cheerleader. Convy pretty much phones in his role, though he is Laurence Olivier compared to the rest of the positively dreadful male performers. Notable baseball player Dent inexplicably portrays a Dallas Cowboy hopeful and is excruciating every time he opens his mouth. Troster plays a redneck jerk who is trying to blackmail cheerleader Tewes into posing for nude photographs in her uniform. Most of the cheerleading applicants are played by women either pushing thirty or beyond it and their performances vary from okay to awful. Apart from Seymour, the only dash of taste or class in the film is the inherently sophisticated Stephens, who gives her role just the right amount of warmth mixed with bitchiness. Still, the film succeeds in what it set out to do, which is show a lot of legs and cleavage and while away two hours. This film just preceded the death of disco and it's amusing to see the judges refer to it and the ladies doing their thing on the dance floor after hours while polyester-suited, thick-mustached extras court them with their "awesome" moves. The movie was a ratings smash and inspired an almost immediate follow-up (with the equally knockout title of "Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders II".)
Review of Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders
