Little Girls in Pretty Boxes

This was meant to be a critique of a certain kind of gymnastic coaching -"put the pressure on your players, so that they can better stand up to the greater pressures to come in performing before large audiences", but the movie was so fairly presented,that when I viewed the final result - a glorious display of energy, fitness, and sheer athleticism, by these young girls, I certainly thought that the means justified the ends.

That end result being one young girl attaining her dream of athletic perfection, by dint of sacrifice, hard work, and enduring a harsh regime applied by a demanding coach,another girl sustaining a nasty injury, due to his insistence, with yet another youngster being removed from a tough program, very much against her wishes through her parents getting cold feet - if all soccer moms, hockey dads, and other responsible elders of sports-playing had this same attitude toward this coaching philosophy of being "As good as you can be", I would fear that our youth would grow to be not very good.

The cast was professional enough to make one hate the pushy coach - even though he was right - and identify with the guilt-stricken parents, as dead-wrong as I deem them. Altogether, a thought-provoking well-made absorbing film

Good movie, with good acting, but a very scary look at how coaches are allowed to treat the children under their care by the irresponsible "stage parents" who care more about their kids "making it" than they do about the kids themselves.

Swoozie Kurtz was wonderful, as usual! Great acting, going from a truly caring mom, to a pushy shrew, and finally back to a loving, responsible parent. Phillip Casnoff truly made you hate him! And Courtney Peldon is a very good young actress! And I can't say enough about young Aimee Walker...THAT girl is a REAL inspiration...not just a cute little girl looking pretty and turning flips, but a wonderfully strong human being! I agree with the reviewer who said that a better ending would have been for the mom who finally came to her senses and got her kid away from that maniac coach. And as to the reviewer who thinks "the ends justifies the means" (treatment that bordered on verbal abuse and a lack of regard for the health and safety of his athletes), I can only hope that he never has children....

Rated this one 8/10, which for me is absolutely exceptionally as a TV movie rating, but it was well written (consequent ending), well directed (not too pathetic, as otherwise usual) and played more serious and substantial than the mainstream TV stuff.

I liked Swoosie Kurtz and especially John Ashton as the parents, showing how perceptions can change during the development of a storyline surely being found like this in many, many average family environments.

Courtney Peldon did a good job as well – but as I said above, I wonder what the marvelous Amy Jo Johnson has made out of it in Perfect Body (1997) (TV).