Rainy Day Friends is a 1985 American drama film written and directed by Gary Kent, starring Esai Morales, Chuck Bail, Janice Rule, Carrie Snodgress and John Phillip Law.
[7] An uplifting article by Los Angeles Times freelance writer Sandra Hanson Konte about her own struggle with cancer,[6] and a docudrama made by University of Texas student Kevin Wilson, which used a football game as an allegory for the fight against the illness, informed the film's more optimistic twist on its real-world inspiration.
[3] Vincent Canby of The New York Times gave the film a negative review, writing that it "is so stuffed with positive thinking that it seems grossly overweight, though dramatically frail.
"[4] Along the same lines, Harry Haun of the New York Daily News deemed it "a mindless mass of gravel and goo", although "Esai Morales gives, under the circumstances, a rather admirable account of the young patient".
[24] In his syndicated Gannett review, William Wolf wrote that "Rainy Day Friends is a well-meant independent film that one would like to applaud, but it just isn't very good.
"[25] Mary Beth Crain of L.A. Weekly lamented that the film's angry, socially-conscious message was wasted on a cast of characters that amounted to "a whole slew of walking platitudes".
[26] Richard Freedman of Newhouse News Service drew parallels with El Norte and Champions, but deemed that "in its stolid overplotting and high-mindedness, it somehow adds up to less than the sum of those two superior films.
"[6] David Pickering of the Corpus Christi Times deemed that the film's immigration subplots were hastily set aside in the later parts, but "deserved credits for excelling in several areas—notably, in its frank and sensitive treatment of cancer".
[29] The film's most celebrated scene is a stunt where the lead character gets his foot tangled in a rope attached to a truck, causing him to get dragged across the pavement amidst vehicular traffic.
[5][6] For his performance, future blockbuster mainstay Spiro Razatos (who doubled for Morales) earned early acclaim in the Best Specialty Stunt category of the 1986 Stuntman Awards.