American Sports Schlock Blocks Drama

Rating: 5/10 (17 September 2003)

This was a seriously mediocre movie. It would be a good TV movie I guess. The direction was stupid, the screenplay incredibly predictable and clunky (esp. the first 1/2 hour!) and above it all, it was FOOTBALL FOOTBALL FOOTBALL. I just do not GET what the hell it is with football. At all.

I mean, watching it, I had a lot of questions, like "Is that guy's job being coach for a high school team? That's his job?" Now, forgive me, I'm a Yankee, football had not so much meaning up where I grew up, so I'm totally confused. Is that normal? If so, give me a break! I've never heard of a public school coach who wasn't a teacher FIRST. So that confused me a lot. Second, all those resources. For football. Why? Everything about the set up in the movie (and yeah, I know it's a movie!) screamed "Damn, this is a cash cow!" It was like going to one of those palaces in German with all the gold leaf -- sure, it's pretty, but the money from it came from the people's sweat and tears.
On the positive side, I thought "Sunshine," the gay quarterback was cool and noted that hell, overall that team had a LOT of sissies in it, which was an interesting sub-plot underlying in there. Of course I'm not so sure the fact that boy didn't get his ass beat in was very realistic but hell, OK, didn't want to see him with black eyes myself either.