Soft, phony, and a HARD watch!

Rating: 2/10 (27 March 2011)

In the last decade, I've realized that perhaps the most difficult "genre" of movie to make work is the SPORTS movie! Not only are there only probably a handful of 'great' sports films in the history of cinema, there are really very few 'good' sports movies (relative to how many sports films that have been made). Really, the 1980s is the end of the era of even good sports movies (and most of them about baseball!). It was officially over and done with then.
All the so-called major sports flicks made in the last 10 years are pretty much formulaic and follow the same recipe: tell the tale of a bunch of downtrodden, undertalented (yet scrappy!) "brothers" who band together to pull off the impossible...win the big game! And I actually think that this film that I'm reviewing REMEMBER THE TITANS (2000) started this new trend of rather formulaic, soft-headed, cheesy sports movies of the last decade, which include WE ARE MARSHALL and GLORY ROAD, all of which were supposed to be "fact-based" movies. The problem with all these movies is that, while they may have gotten the very general details correct (character names, opponent mantres, era costumes, etc.), all these films fail where it really counts: character, dialogue, and story.
Set in a 1971 D.C. suburb and starring Denzel Washington (who really had gotten long in the tooth at this point in his career!) plays yet another typical in-your-face, take-no-junk, proud black man, a hodgepodge of pretty much all the characters he had played up to that point in his career, and it's annoying! Virtually all the characters in REMEMBER THE TITANS (including Washington) are all one-dimensional and cliché. The ever reliable Will Patton does his best to overcome a thankless role as the white assistant coach that Washington's character deposes (and pretty much runs over for the entire movie!); of course Patton's character turns out to be a closet liberal and completely understanding of the man who took HIS job from him! Hayden Pannietierre, as Patton's annoyingly spunky and super-smart daughter certainly shows talent for a child actor (at the time), but what kid in the history of the world has ever acted like this?! Then you have a bunch of nameless, one-note footballers and assistant coaches of both races who somehow learn to LOVE each other! The absolutely most annoying character was that faux-gay transfer surfer dude from California, who is one of the weirdest characters ever to grace the movie screen!
The only tolerable characters in the film are played by Ryan Hurst and Wood Harris as the prospective leaders of the white and black players and help bring them all together. Their personal relationship is actually authentic (thus the extra star!), but everything surrounding them is NOT! In real life (which this movie is supposed to be based on), even post 60s (1971 to be exact), I find it hard to believe that opposite races would have hated each other so vehemently at the start of the film, only to end up getting along so famously by the end of it, especially on a team that was literally FORCED to be together!