Semi-Tough

Billy Clyde Puckett and Shake Tiller are professional football players and close friends who share an apartment in Miami and also share Barbara Jane Bookman, the daughter of the Texas billionaire who owns their team. The arrangement works until Shake becomes interested in a self-improvement movement that stirs questions of conscience, and Barbara Jane's father pressures her to settle on one of the two men. The friendship at the center of the film comes under strain as the teammates compete for her.

Michael Ritchie directed this 1977 comedy, the fifth of the fifteen features he made. Walter Bernstein and Ring Lardner Jr. wrote the screenplay, adapting Dan Jenkins's novel, and David Merrick produced it for United Artists. Burt Reynolds plays Billy Clyde, Kris Kristofferson plays Shake and Jill Clayburgh plays Barbara Jane; Robert Preston, Bert Convy and Roger E. Mosley appear among the forty-seven credited cast members. The film runs 108 minutes and mixes comedy, drama and romance, with satirical jabs at the era's popular self-help programs and spiritual movements.

Released on November 18, 1977, it drew a critics' rating of 6.4 out of 10 from twelve reviews, while on TMDB it holds 5.4 out of 10 from around sixty votes, a smaller audience sample that sits below the critics' mark. Ritchie's previous film had been The Bad News Bears, and his next would be The Island.