On the Right Track


On the Right Track is a 1981 American comedy film that was the first feature film starring Gary Coleman. It was directed by Lee Philips, produced by Ronald Jacobs, and released to theaters by 20th Century Fox in the spring of 1981.

Background

After the debut of the sitcom Diff'rent Strokes in November 1978, Gary Coleman quickly gained popularity. Zephyr Productions was created to promote Coleman's star potential, and 1981's On the Right Track was the first movie developed from that initiative. It was filmed in 1980, primarily in Chicago. New York Loves Lester was an early working title for the project, when the film was planned to be set in New York City. The subsequent working title was A Guy Could Get Killed Out There.

Plot

Gary Coleman stars as a homeless shoeshine boy named Lester who is living in a locker at Union Station, Chicago. Already a beloved figure among the staff at the station who look after him, and suffering attempts to move him to an orphanage, he finds great popularity after it is revealed that he has an amazing talent for picking winning horses at the racetrack.

Cast

Though it received a number of reviews concluding that it was overly sappy or simply capitalizing on Coleman's TV following, Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune, Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times, and Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times gave it somewhat more positive reviews. Gary Coleman earned a Razzie Award nomination for Worst Actor for his performance in the film, but lost to Klinton Spilsbury for The Legend of the Lone Ranger.
The film was released on VHS in the 1980s, but it has never seen an official release on DVD. The movie has not received much attention in latter years, though a short article in Entertainment Weekly in 2004 compared the film to the then newly released Tom Hanks film The Terminal, where Hanks' character lives for months in an airport terminal.