A very quick opinion

Rating: 4/10 (31 January 2006)

I think people vote on what comments are useful based on whether they agree with the reviewer on whether the movie was good or a waste of time. Nevertheless, at the risk of having 0 out of 15 people find this comment useful, I'll say the following: Apparently, somebody remembered the success of "Hoosiers" and "Miricle" and decided they needed to slap together something to compete. While we all love an occasional Little-Engine-That-Could," story, it should be original, not just a re-tooling of something successful in the past.
What could have made this movie fantastic would be a real subplot. True, the movie shows some racism, but racism from sources outside the main characters amounts to just background. Had the plot really gone into the problems Coach Haskins had with the school's administration (if he had any); if there had been something to imply that the coach's job was on the line day after day or game after game; or if the movie had gone into the struggles of the white teammates to accept their black counterparts, we might be dealing with a great movie. None of this played out, though. Instead, any problem Coach Haskins faced was simply dismissed by a cut-and-paste inspiring one-liner. What, then, was there to keep the audience on the edge of its seat throughout the film? Josh's acting was a little flat. All he really had to do was deliver the inspiring one-liners. No one else really stood out either.
This movie--which bills itself as based on a true story--climaxes with the all-black team going against the all-white team and prevailing. If, as I read in another comment, the movie failed to accurately portray Kentucky as starting with a black player, then the movie simply betrayed the truth. I don't expect movies to portray historical events with 100% accuracy, but if a movie labels itself as "based on a true story," and then omits a big part of the truth, it loses whatever inspiration it might have had.
My advice: eat popcorn at home tonight and save your money for something truly worthwhile.