Anyone up for some Roller Blading???

I’ll never forget the time in Madera, I think it was a Saturday, when BYU was playing Oklahoma in the Maui invitational. I remember Nick was in the living room with me and we went crazy at the end of the game when Knight sunk the three-point shot after the Sanderson miss. What I remember most, however, was the time-outs. During every time out, I would run outside with my basketball, shoot for a few seconds, dunk on Nick a couple of times and then run inside for the game. This happened at each juncture in the game and continued long after the final buzzer went off. Growing up, there were many movies that compelled me to act out whatever was being done. Of course, almost every major karate movie sent me into dropkicks and roundhouses, hence the siblings’ fear of the "Power of ten tigers," aka "If only I could touch your hair."

I, therefore, pose these questions: What is it in movies and TV that makes us want to imitate whatever was being done in the show? Is it healthy? How should we approach this phenomenon? Should this be a major factor in considering an Oscar bid? I will now explore this…

In order to address this topic in full, we first need to establish a name for this occurrence. Right now the best I can come up with is the Compellability Factor. (Kind of like Fear Factor but without the worm poop and goat testicles. While we’re on the subject, I absolutely loathe the show. There is nothing worse than eating ice cream, flipping the channels, and coming across twin bimbos eating maggot larvae. And we wonder why people from other countries think of us the way they do. This is my least favorite shows & the worst show on prime time. There, I said it.)

Anyway, the Compellability Factor is something that, in my opinion, hasn’t been studied enough (in fact, not at all, as far as I can tell). I think every movie has some form of Compellability, which can carry a positive or negative rating. Another factor within the Compellability Factor is the lasting affect. For example, Star Wars was and is a great movie series. However, once you get past the fact that you don’t have The Force, no matter how hard you try focusing, you give up and the Compellability Factor is short-lived. Of course its staying power is due to many other factors including soryline, plot, acting, etc. Another cable series, on the other hand, like Wrestlemania has spurred numerous wrestling federations, the moronic Backyard Wrestling folks, and the embarrassingly prolonged retirement of Hulk Hogan (He may have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, but he’s still wrestling). For these people, the compellability Factor of Wrestlemania is more important than they will ever realize. Of course, the acting is not as good as Star Wars.

So, lucky for you, I will now take the time to outline 5 movies which, in their day, ranked high (on my internal radar) in the compellability Factor Department. Note: each of these movies deserve a full review in its own right. I will, however, only address the Compellability Factor…for now….

Honorable Mentions:
Rocky III & IV
The Last Dragon
8 mile
Rad
Search for Animal Chin
Karate kid
Top Gun
Blackhawk Down

Now For the Top Five (drumroll please...)
Over the Top
One of Sylvester Stallone’s greatest performances, period—he inspired every boy from 8 to 17 years old to challenge his little sister in arm wrestling match, and haughtily walk around triumphantly afterward. Any actor that can do that should win some kind of award. While he didn’t win an Oscar, Sly was nominated for a Razzie Award (Worst Actor) for this movie in 1988. People harass him for "Stop, or My Mom Will Shoot," but how can people be so hard on him after "Over the Top"—there’s nowhere to go but down. While the Compellability Factor is high in this movie, I feel it lacked some realism. For example, the exercises—remember when they hold on to the door railing of the truck and do the little pull-ups. THESE DON’T WORK. I can do about 800 of these and it does NOTHING. If anything, it did give to the world the now-famous "over-the-top" move where you place the thumb of your fingers over you and your opponent’s thumb. Simply put, the best arm-wrestling movie of all time.
CF Rating: 7.7 out of 10

No Retreat No Surrender
What do you get when you cross Jean Claude Van Dam with a Russian accent, a Bruce Lee wannabe, endless fight scenes and A.C. Green’s little brother—only one of the best films of all time. What makes it so great? It’s definitely not the acting. You could’ve put Pauly Shore in the movie as Jason, cut his hair, taught him some fighting moves and the acting component wouldn’t have changed. The movie centers around a family whose father is a karate instructor running away from past financial problems while his son is a young karate version of Napoleon's Dynamite's Uncle Rico: embarrasingly over-confident, yet earnest in his quest for karate stardom. He meets up with some bad dudes from another Dojo and the movie culminates with him using his Bruce Lee training on a bunch of bad dudes. This movie is unique in that its Compellability Factor is three-fold. Not only does it make you want to move the coffee table, it also compels you to train and workout as well as learn how to break-dance. Overall good family fun. Two words: Chi, Power!
CF Rating: 8.3 out of 10

Searching for Bobby Fischer
Just making sure you’re still awake

Hoosiers
This one’s a no-brainer. It doesn’t really start coming into play until Jimmy starts playing. You watch these guys start winning, coming together, and you think, "hey, I could play for with those guys…I could run the picket fence…I could get used to those tight shorts. And then, before you know it, you’re outside in the driveway, wearing Nick's shorts, trying to knock down ten straight jumpers from the top of the key thinking you would have been unstoppable back then…
The Compellability Factor takes a big hit, however, when my mayor, Gene Hackman, kisses Barbara Hershey on the lips. We didn’t need to see that. Who wants to shoot hoops after that?!?! The end, no matter how implausible, redeems itself.
CF Rating: 8.5 out of 10

The Wizard
A few months ago, I saw Rain Man for the first time on TBS. I knew it had received a few awards and so I sat down and watched the whole thing. Throughout the whole movie, I kept thinking to myself, "I’ve seen this movie before." It wasn’t until Dustin Hoffman shows up at the casino and wins by counting/memorizing the cars that I realized I was practically watching The Wizard. This wasn’t just any movie—it featured movie stars Beau Bridges, Fred Savage and Christian Slater. Look at that cast again--Youre talking about three guys in the prime of their careers. Throw in the beautiful Mora Grissum, and we're talking about Michigan's Fab-Five caliber. (For a lot of people it is kind of like Robin Hood Prince of Thieves: Big Stars, horribly predictable, and ultimately disapointing, kind of like Ocean's Twelve. I don't want to get off on another tangent, but am I the only one that thought Ocean's Twelve was one of the most uninteresting movies within the last five years)? For those that don't know the premise of this movie, for whatever blashemous reason, this movie features a runaway quasi-autistic kid who turns out to be the Shaquille O’Neil of Nintendo games. Remember how good I was in double dribble (or any other game for that matter)? He was kind of like that. This game made you want to pick up a game controller and start playing, even if Mom tried to hide the controllers in the washing machine or the headset of her waterbed. Remember when Mom tried to play Super Mario Bros. in Delano and all y'all tried to tell her how to do it...You drove her away from the game. She could've been one of the greats. You should all be ashamed of yourselves. This game alone inspired me to singlehandedly beat Bionic Commando, Metroid and Contra (needless to say, I didn't date much). Of course, no one got close to Dad's Duck Hunt skills.
CF Rating: 9 out 10

Airborne
How can you go wrong when the main antagonist of the movie has the name "Chocolate Stain Blaine"? You can't-- this movie has it all. It has so many different roller blading scenes, you keep waiting for it to be done but there's always another scene, kind of like Crocodile Dundee II (not that it's a bad thing); you get roller hockey, street/freestyle rollerblading, street racing. The movie focuses on the adventures of a misplaced California surfer/rollerblader who is forced to relocate to Minnesota to stay with his cousin Wiley (aka That Guy from Without a Paddle). This movie not only has a very high Compellability Factor, it also has a high Rewatchablity & Fast-Forwarability Factor (to the good parts.) Airborne drove me to play roller hockey with Trevor and his friends every day after school, rain or shine. You read that right-- Because of this movie, I would drag out the blue trash cans and play roller hockey with 11 and 12 year old kids in the street, all the while beating my chest and pumping my fists in the air after every goal (similar to NHL 94). Man, I was pathetic, and I loved every minute of it.
CF Rating: 9.8 out of 10

A movie's Compellability Factor has not been explored enough. If anything, I hope this has brought awareness to the phenomenon and that you may begin (if you haven't started already) to assess movies not only on their acting, storyline, plot, predictability, societal value, but also on its Compellability Factor...or not.