Intensity	Stupidity:Nudity Ratio 4:7	Budget Medium

Betsey Russell. Sigh. Avenging Angel, Cheerleader Camp and Private School. Here she plays Tommy Boyd, the titular Tomboy which gives you a little insight into what passes for subtleness in this movie.

We open with shots of a little girl playing hardball with the boys. After hitting an inside the park homerun, she is hoisted into the air by a man we assume to be her father. Next we do a slow pan across various decorations on someone's bedroom wall. We find out that papa Boyd was an astronaut and possibly a racecar driver. We also see a catcher's mask and a baseball jersey. Hmm, this must be Tommy's room and sure enough there is the grown up Tommy in bed. As the title credits roll we watch Tommy take a shower. Tommy heads off to work on a motorcycle taking a brief pause to play some basketball (where I can't help noticing that she shoots like a girl). Then it is off to the office which in this case is a garage. Tommy machines a part for a rich kid's antique car and impresses Randy Starr, the racecar driver. After some bonding which includes a wet t-shirt, Tommy and Randy end up racing each other. Randy crashes and Tommy wins and forces the rich kid to buy her car for a boat load of money.

Tomboy is a little like the 2002 "Repli-kate" which combines a gorgeous woman with best buddy attributes. In Tomboy the guy stuff includes working on cars, driving fast and basketball. In Repli-kate oral sex played a role, but I digress. At any rate, Tommy is the perfect girl. Really good looking and not into girlie things. Her best friend, Seville Ritz (Kristi Somers) is just the opposite and clearly a gold digger who good naturedly goes after guys for their money. Early on Seville's dance group performs for some potential backers and steals a couple of moves from "Flashdance" but even though Somers is a competent dancer, the scene is clumsily shot. Still, it reminds us that this film was shot in the 80's with its dance/aerobics costumes.

Once Randy Starr (Gerard Christopher who would go on to play Superboy) enters the picture we move to a love montage where we see the happy couple doing cute things. In true drive-in fashion this happens after we see the couple doing nasty things. Things go well until Randy states that Tommy is a good driver for a girl. This pisses Tommy off and soon she and Randy are set to race each other. Tommy goes back to the garage where she talks with the owner for a while until he says they need to get to work on the suspension. Of course the next scene has them working on a carburator.

Betsy does not come off as a tomboy at all. When we see her play basketball, she clearly lacks any skill. More to the point, the director should have had someone coach her on how to do a jump shot and a dribble move or two. This would have allowed for some pretty good quick cuts that might have made her look more athletic. When she is in grease monkey mode, she usually has a couple of little smudges on her face. Really we never get the feeling that Betsy can do these things. But then we are also expected to believe that she built a race car in her spare time and created some "electronic propulsion" device that involves an awful lot of buttons and lights in the car's cockpit. Now lots of mechanics put together racecars that they run at local events, however, I doubt that any of these guys are going to have much sucess against anything racing at Daytona.

The director opted for tons of reaction shots from Betsy. Almost all of the plot points are puncuated by a close up of her face and her response to what just happened. We know something funny just happened because there is a close up of Betsy laughing. Something bad happens and we see a close up of Betsy looking determined or pissed off. The movie is light enough so that this kind of heavy handed direction works okay and it is not like Betsy is the only one mugging for the camera.

Kristi Somers who plays Seville Ritz only made a few movies, which is a shame. She did do some music videos including Was (Not Was) "Walk the Dinosaur". Somers played most of her roles in classic B movie style going over the top on a regular basis. She actually has a more muscular body than Betsy in this film.

So is it worth watching. Yes. Betsy is really cute in the movie. The movie does not take itself too seriously. Most of the characters come off as being basically nice, though Junior's friends are largely assholes. There are no surprises in the movie. Betsy's character is not even challanged once and only has the smallest of self doubt when she has to get her homebuilt car ready to face a car that is going to be racing at Daytona. Reality never raises it's ugly head in Tomboy.

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