"Cruel and Unusual Punishment" Indeed

Rating: 4/10 (29 September 2005)

It is common knowledge in the film critic community that sentimentality, if used improperly, is among the most hated of all celluloid evils. "Remember The Titans" provides a step-by-step lesson in how not to use it.
The film is based on the true story of the Titans, a high school football team from the small town of Alexandria, Virginia. It is 1971, their school has just been integrated, and their beloved head coach (Patton) has been replaced with a fiery African-American named Herman Boone (Washington). The players encounter a flurry of racial problems, and Boone hauls them all away to training camp to make them become not just a perfect football team, but friends as well. The film then chronicles the Titans' perfect season as they struggle to cope with a hateful, bigoted nation.
From the first to the last frame of "Titans", the audience is bombarded with an insurmountable amount of genre clichés and cringe-inducing cheese. To give you an idea of said cheese, let me just say that I cannot count on my fingers the number of times one or more characters randomly burst into song for no reason, usually singing what is sort of the film's theme song, "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" by Diana Ross. This is meant to be heart-warming, playful, and inspiring, but it just comes off as irritating. As far as clichés...lord, where do I start? We have copious amounts of "soulful" black characters who want to do nothing but love their "brothers", the "tough" controversial coach who just wants to unite the team (and his underdeveloped assistant who just acts as someone to feed him back lines so he can essentially have conversations with himself), the promising athlete who is injured just before the "big game", the ostentatious ladies' man with a big ego, the sensitive, "enlightened" hippie with long blonde locks (who is, of course, considered homosexual), the up-tight redneck who always hates "c--ns" no matter what, the lovable "Bubba", the "cute" "I'm nine and a half!" tomboy girl who loves football, not Barbies (complete with a foil little girl to emphasize how much she loves football and hates Barbies!), and two, count 'em, two token "fat guys" whose purpose is to simply provide contrived comic relief, usually in the form of singing the aforementioned "Ain't No Mountain High Enough".
On top of the script being shallow, predictable, conventional, and all too sentimental, I think one of the things that bothered me the most about "Titans" was Trevor Rabin's intrusive, grating score. It was nothing but a ubiquitous, inescapable cliché trying to tell the audience what to think. It was, to put it bluntly, insulting.
The acting is capably handled by Denzel Washington and Will Patton (who are both very talented actors who consistently accept awful roles), but everyone else in this turgid mess stumbles through their bland scenes and poorly-written lines with about as much intensity as a dead turtle. The direction, delivered by Boaz Yakin (whose illustrious directing career is comprised of three other films including the fabulous "Uptown Girls"! He also wrote such fantastic films as "From Dusk Till Dawn 2: Texas Blood Money", "Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights", and, surprise, surprise, "The Rookie", another touching Disney sports extravaganza!), is utterly pedestrian. Also, the soundtrack is comprised of '60s and '70s rock songs that are all great, but have become nothing more than mood-setting clichés (someone's been watching too much "Forrest Gump").
"Remember The Titans" also suffers from the severe detriment of taking itself too seriously. It is trying so self-consciously hard to deliver a message that it ends up doing nothing but degrading the audience's intelligence with its obvious agenda. It tries to force us to laugh, cry, and be inspired, but it only succeeds in annoying us.
The only thing that saves this film from falling into the D range are its occasional entertaining moments, but they are far too little to save this twisted wreck of overused morals and tired storytelling vehicles. Denzel, please try to stay away from horrid wastes of celluloid such as this and try to star in more films like "Training Day". You can do better.
4/10