Only now does it occur to me... SIDE OUT (1990)

Only now does it occur to me... that there's only one movie where you can witness a neon-candy-colored Jose Cuervo-sponsored volleyball Kumite. And that movie is SIDE OUT.

So what is a "side out?" It seems to be an arcane bit of volleyball jargon which is, as far as I remember, never defined by the film itself. As to the question of what is "SIDE OUT," the movie? we can creep a little closer to clarity.

So what we have here is C. Thomas Howell (THE OUTSIDERS, THE HITCHER, RED DAWN). He's playing a law student on summer break. (Can we thank our lucky stars that it's not his blackface-wearing law student from SOUL MAN?) He's picked up at the airport by volleyball-enthusiast/hearse-driving buddy Christopher Rydell (best known to readers of this site for starring in Dario Argento's TRAUMA). Rydell immediately ingratiates himself to the viewer by forcing a weird Freddy Krueger reference

which sort of implies that he deserves primo airport parking because he's picking up... a burn victim child murderer? (C. Thomas Howell does not play a burn victim in this movie, not even if we're counting sunburn.)

Rydell has rad vanity plates, too, because this is a movie made in 1990.

Anyway, C. Tom Howell is really here on the West Coast to do the bidding of his evil uncle (Terry Kiser, of WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S)

who is absolutely just reprising "Bernie" from WEEKEND AT BERNIE'S. It's basically a prequel. He's a real estate lawyer who puts poor C. Tom up to some white-collar repo man antics, evicting poor people and gathering materials to help dastardly land developers (again, this is a movie made in 1990).

Kathy Ireland is here, playing the evil uncle's paralegal, or something. 

 

She's in the movie for such a brief span, I have to imagine she had other scenes which were deleted. Which is a shame, because Cannon Films' ALIEN FROM L.A. revealed that she has better acting chops than you might expect.

Anyway, C. Tom finds out that obeying corporate masters is much lamer than jus' hangin' out and playin' beach volleyball all day.

 

So Rydell makes him an offer he can't refuse.

And C. Tom gets a girlfriend along the way: Courtney Thorne-Smith (MELROSE PLACE, ALLEY MCBEAL, SUMMER SCHOOL), a waitress at the local volleyball-themed watering hole.

 Check out that totally tubular neon sign out front, of a volleyball getting swatted back and forth:

And can we talk about Courtney Thorne-Smith's blouse for a minute? The costumers were up to some wacky shit here––obviously neon pink was a staple of a 1990 beach fashion ensemble, but when we finally get a reverse shot, it reveals a heretofore unseen transparent plastic back panel

which is practically some outré, cyberpunk, "Zhora in BLADE RUNNER" type-stuff. (There will be more on this neon fashion manifesto later, that's a promise.)

Anyway, she is the romantic lead, and she is mostly defined by her blondeness and physical proximity to C. Thomas Howell. I'm pretty sure this doesn't pass the Bechdel Test, but you already knew that.

So C. Tom is living his best life, and participating in volleyball tournaments which are far more plentiful and higher paid in the SIDE OUT universe than in ours. Oh, look––C. Tom and Christopher Rydell are doing the crane kick from THE KARATE KID, a playful reference to a film starring C. Tom's OUTSIDERS cast buddy, Ralph Macchio:

Anyway, Christopher Rydell is tragically injured during this match, and C. Tom must join forces with crusty volleyball veteran Peter Horton (CHILDREN OF THE CORN, THIRTYSOMETHING), who is absolutely the poor man's Steven Weber. Think about those implications.

Through many montages, the two learn to work past their differences and become an awesome volleyball team. Also, C. Tom helps him out with some real estate difficulties, and really sticks it to the man (his uncle "Bernie"). Whew.

A good drinking game you could play with this movie is, "drink every time C. Thomas Howell takes his shirt off."

Eventually, it's time for the big tourney, the Jose Cuervo-hosted volleyball kumite with a $100,000 prize.

If you've seen ROCKY IV, you can probably predict exactly how this goes, point by point,

even if you don't predict the use of the rad 1990 insult "cheese dick."

The movie ends the instant they win "the big game," without any additional character development/reaction/resolution, because the movie knows itself well enough to know that would be completely unnecessary. 

What I don't understand is this: why isn't this just called VOLLEYBALL: THE MOVIE? If you polled a thousand people at the mall and asked them what sport a "side out" is from, how many would guess volleyball? This movie's entire raison d'être is the Kenny Loggins volleyball montage in TOP GUN, and they're even brazen enough to recycle "Playing With the Boys" for it's biggest volleyball montage.

One final thought. At a fashion-show-within-a-volleyball-tournament they actually spell out the formal aesthetics of this movement. It's practically a manifesto. I thought this sort of rigorous self-definition went out of style with the Dadaists, Surrealists, and the Cubists, but here it is, veritably thriving in 1990!

 

 

Volleyball fashion is an ethos, really. Also, there are women in that crowd, and that woman is talking about a fashion manifesto––so I guess this sorta passes the Bechdel test? 

SIDE OUT, ladies and gentlemen.