I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

Ernest Hemingway's short story, originally filmed in 1950 as "Under My Skin", was about a crooked jockey hoping to reform for the sake of his worshipful son; this TV-adaptation--designed to showcase teenage star Kristy McNichol--changes the son to an estranged daughter and the jockey to a penniless horse-trainer trying to recapture his former glory. The two characters butt heads but don't seem to share the same temperament--it's all fabricated. Kristy's character lives in an isolated bubble, with no friends, no background, and an interest in horses which rears itself up suddenly. It might have been a more tolerable family drama without Dominic Frontiere's dripping, cloying strings on the soundtrack, not to mention a ready-made love-interest for the father (and mama for the girl) in a hash-slinging waitress who has just purchased a beautiful house in the country. This is strictly a racetrack fairy tale, and not a very convincing one at that. One of McNichol's few mediocre performances; Warren Oates crinkles his eyes and bellows in appropriate fashion.

Drunk/bum/loser, Frank Butler, re-unites with his teen-age daughter, Jo, whom he hasn't seen in years. Jo has just lost her mother so Frank takes her under his wing and introduces her to the horse racing circuit which hasn't treated Frank kindly over the past few years. As Frank eases his way back into the equine fraternity he finds things aren't going to go to good for him because of a scandal he was involved in some years ago. Finally, he and Jo manage to pick up a horse of their own and enter him in a race, but tragedy strikes again just before the big event which leaves Jo all by herself with a heavy burden. I enjoyed this film, but it was no big shakes: it's been done before in other guises.