Nerd Movie Reviews

When the Game Stands Tall Review

A good play that was sacked at the line of scrimmage.

So I have said that, while I really have no interest in watching football, baseball, hockey, tennis, golf, badmitten, curling, soccer, lacrosse, polo, dwarf tossing, dachshund racing, or bowling (actually soccer is kind of exciting to watch.  I kid, I kid.  Soccer sucks too) I quite enjoy a good sports movie.  Major League, 42, Rollerball, A League of Their Own, Slapshot, Field of Dreams, Jerry McGuire, the Hunger Games; these are all sports movies that draw me in.  While I might not be interested in watching muscular grown men sweat and strain while slapping each others behinds in real life the story of how they got there is really fascinating.

So why did I not enjoy this film?  Well first of all as the main character says frequently “It’s only high school football”.  Caring about high school sports that do not involved your own kid in some way (quarterback, cheerleader, water boy) is something only creepy single middle age men with no lives do from the comfort of their parents basement (and before any of you say anything I DO NOT live in my parents basement) as a means of pretending they have things going on.  As I learned the hard way high school is merely a diving board from which you launch yourself into college, the Army, or the deep fryer at your local McDonalds.  A week after you graduate your sum accomplishments will have all the weight and sticking ability of a fart on a windy night.  High school is not something to be enjoyed so much as endured and watching a bunch of teenagers talk about how this is the greatest moment of their lives actually left me feeling sorry for them all (Spiderman for class pres image courtesy of the Spiderman t-shirt category).  The net effect leaves this film clawing desperately for a point.

Secondly movies about sports generally are good when they have a story, and this movie didn’t bother with such minutia.  I’m not going to say all movies should have a standard three act structure with a protagonist, an antagonist, and some kind of main story line but if you are going to divert off that path odds are you should have some idea of what else you are going to do, rather then move from unconnected plot point to plot point like a single cell in a Brownian movement.  There was a definite tone or feel to this film but in truth if felt like six different 20 minute after school specials about God and sports.  It is rarely the sign of  good movie when the big bad monster the hero has to slay is introduced, confronted, and defeated in the last 30 minutes of a 115 minute film.

That’s not to say this film was irredeemable.  The acting was tolerable and they actually cast a few kids who looked like they might really be in high school (although a little research shows their age at about 22 on average).  If you consider Coach Lad the protagonist and try to follow his character arc…well you pretty much go no where and end up at exactly the same place he started at.  The character who actually evolved was Chris Ryan and he was a minor character until the last 10 minutes.  A lot of the scenes were well executed and very believable.  However it was another assemblage story made of many small parts.  It really felt like they filmed the entire movie without a script and then tried to assemble an ending in the editing room.

The problems endemic to assemblage stories are rampant here.  Characters blow in and disappear like girls in my dating life.  Plot points and story lines show up and disappear unconnected, never giving you time to connect with the film.  There is a sequence early on where a player’s mother dies, leaving him all alone with just his kid brother.  He has a scene where he is crying, desperate and feeling alone while Coach Lad comforts him and tells him he has 60 brothers from the team.  This seems like the basis for a good movie story but at that point he goes off to college and drops out of the film until resurfacing to watch the final game.  The big bad team they have to defeat at the end is not their long term rival with a traitor transfer player but a team we only hear mentioned in passing early on until it’s time to get pounded by them.  It’s hard to care about defeating a bad guy when you are never given a reason to dislike them.

I suppose it’s part of the bad side of taking movie stories from real life.  I often rail when they take a real life story and Hollywood it up but maybe they are right to do so.  The actual story of the De La Salle Spartans really isn’t a great story in a classic drama sense.  However, perhaps the issue isn’t changing a real life story to make it more interesting.  Perhaps the issue is not every story needs to be made into a movie and a little discrimination when choosing which one to do might be in order.

Because the film has no real plot and so many small stories it will be a true challenge to my new policy of summing up scripts in one or two lines.  Coach Ladouceur is a religious studies teacher and coach of a team that has won 151 games in a row through hard work and Christian morals.  His winning team graduates to go to college or be shot (with a pretty powerful funeral) while Coach Lad has a heart attack and the next year team loses the first game in a long time spiraling them down into depression.  There are a bunch of small stories and the main one a fairly ham handed (and overacted) conflict between the team star and his overbearing dad pressuring him to beat a high school football scoring record that leads to a kind of pointless ending.

So is it worth seeing?  I’d give it a strong maybe.  If you like sports or are looking for a movie with a portrayal of the strength of faith and ethical behavior then this would be a good film for you.  If you want a film with an actual story and are put off by every sports cliche in the book give it a pass.  Pacing ground on quite a while with the same point being driven home over and over again.  I was feeling the 115 minutes.  Honestly I have a new test and that is at the end of a current movie I ask myself “Would I rather have seen this film or watched Guardians of the Galaxy for a 4th time?”  In this case Guardians wins.  2.5 of 5 Phasers.

The Infamous Dave Inman