When the Trailer Is Better Than the Movie: When the Game Stands Tall
I cried through the trailer for When the Game Stands Tall three times in theaters, and I was really looking forward to crying through the movie since I love sports movies. Sadly, the movie didn't live up to the promise of the trailer.
The movie is about the football team of De La Salle High School, which holds the record for the longest football winning streak. We open at the end of the football season when they win game 151. Bob, the coach, has a heart attack. One of the former players gets shot. They lose two games in a row. (I may have the order of these events slightly wrong.) They start winning again. People start talking about a new streak. Bob considers taking a college coaching job. They win the championships again. That could potentially make for a good movie, but this one is a mess.
The four players we get to know best are Cam, T.K., Chris, and Danny. Cam and T.K. are poor black kids from Richmond. Chris and Danny are rich white kids from Concord. Danny is the coach's son. At the beginning, the movie sets us up to really care about Cam and T.K. They're two of the most engaging characters in the film, partly because their friendship is very well drawn and partly because we get to know their circumstances and families. The problem with this is that Cam and T.K. are outgoing seniors. T.K. dies after being shot outside a party where he was just picking someone up and Cam promptly goes away to college. The TV show version of Friday Night Lights could make this work because it was serialized and time passed, but it doesn't work in a two-hour movie. Chris and Danny come off as arrogant jerks in contrast to Cam and T.K. at the beginning, and even as we got to know Chris's circumstances better (he's filling the role of the talented rich kid with the father who only cares about football and is publicly physically abusive about it in one scene), I never cared that much about him, or about Danny. Not to mention the way the movie got much whiter as it went along.
I think we're supposed to care most about Bob. As they start winning games again and people start talking about a new streak, he spends a lot of time looking thoughtfully/regretfully at his team. I had a lot of sympathy for this. My thought when they lost was, "Losing is good for you." He says over and over again that the point of his program is not winning, and that what he wants from his players is "perfect effort" (I have some philosophical issues with this, but it's better than wanting them to win every time), but even though we can see how unhappy he is with the emphasis on winning, he never does anything about it, which was profoundly narratively frustrating.
One of the weirdest things about the movie as a movie is how Christian it is. I didn't realize De La Salle was a private Christian school, so that aspect of the movie came as a surprise to me. It's also weird because De La Salle is apparently a Catholic school but the movie's Christianity feels more evangelical. I felt like I was supposed to be witnessing their faith by watching the movie. (Oh, how sorry I am that Daniel Radosh no longer has a blog; I would love to see his take on this movie.) There are a couple of scripture conversations because Bob teaches some sort of Bible class as well as being the football coach. Every time we see Laura Dern as Bob's wife, she's framed and lit to make the gold cross she wears around her neck stand out, to the extent that I was eventually trying not to laugh every time she was on screen. When T.K. and Cam start getting college offers, T.K. takes Cam the sample jersey one school sent him and says something like, "We've been praying to play college ball together our whole lives. This isn't just a jersey. It's an answer to our prayers." (I don't have the exact wording down, but it is exactly that cheesy.) Bob gets up to speak at T.K.'s funeral and starts speaking directly to God, which sort of makes sense; what really doesn't make sense in that scene is how small the church is. We see the team praying together, but only before the final game in the movie.
There are other problems with the movie too. Bob and Bev have three children: Danny is a main character since he plays football, but their younger son appears in two scenes and their daughter appears for less than a minute in the scene where Bob's in the hospital recovering from his heart attack. The end credits' mix of documentary footage and text updates make it clear that Bob and Terry, the assistant coach, are a coaching team, but we don't see much of that in the movie. Bob takes the players to the VA hospital for the day to learn life lessons, which isn't a bad idea, but doesn't fit the narrative well. The emphasis is on the team being a brotherhood, which could make for a good story, except that instead of focusing in on the actual relationships between the players, they shortcut to things like guys standing up in their team meetings (where they're supposed to share their emotions) and saying, "I love you," to the whole team and the way the team takes the field: instead of rushing out in a crowd like other teams, they walk calmly, two by two, holding hands.
The football sequences were also a problem, although I don't know if that's due to the cinematography and editing or due to the fact that I don't watch football and am not used to them. Every sequence involves a series of hits that are dramatically filmed and result in someone crashing to the ground in a way that had me waiting for a concussion or other career-ending injury that never came.
If the movie had followed the structure of the trailer, it could have been really good, but unfortunately, this was not that movie.
The movie is about the football team of De La Salle High School, which holds the record for the longest football winning streak. We open at the end of the football season when they win game 151. Bob, the coach, has a heart attack. One of the former players gets shot. They lose two games in a row. (I may have the order of these events slightly wrong.) They start winning again. People start talking about a new streak. Bob considers taking a college coaching job. They win the championships again. That could potentially make for a good movie, but this one is a mess.
The four players we get to know best are Cam, T.K., Chris, and Danny. Cam and T.K. are poor black kids from Richmond. Chris and Danny are rich white kids from Concord. Danny is the coach's son. At the beginning, the movie sets us up to really care about Cam and T.K. They're two of the most engaging characters in the film, partly because their friendship is very well drawn and partly because we get to know their circumstances and families. The problem with this is that Cam and T.K. are outgoing seniors. T.K. dies after being shot outside a party where he was just picking someone up and Cam promptly goes away to college. The TV show version of Friday Night Lights could make this work because it was serialized and time passed, but it doesn't work in a two-hour movie. Chris and Danny come off as arrogant jerks in contrast to Cam and T.K. at the beginning, and even as we got to know Chris's circumstances better (he's filling the role of the talented rich kid with the father who only cares about football and is publicly physically abusive about it in one scene), I never cared that much about him, or about Danny. Not to mention the way the movie got much whiter as it went along.
I think we're supposed to care most about Bob. As they start winning games again and people start talking about a new streak, he spends a lot of time looking thoughtfully/regretfully at his team. I had a lot of sympathy for this. My thought when they lost was, "Losing is good for you." He says over and over again that the point of his program is not winning, and that what he wants from his players is "perfect effort" (I have some philosophical issues with this, but it's better than wanting them to win every time), but even though we can see how unhappy he is with the emphasis on winning, he never does anything about it, which was profoundly narratively frustrating.
One of the weirdest things about the movie as a movie is how Christian it is. I didn't realize De La Salle was a private Christian school, so that aspect of the movie came as a surprise to me. It's also weird because De La Salle is apparently a Catholic school but the movie's Christianity feels more evangelical. I felt like I was supposed to be witnessing their faith by watching the movie. (Oh, how sorry I am that Daniel Radosh no longer has a blog; I would love to see his take on this movie.) There are a couple of scripture conversations because Bob teaches some sort of Bible class as well as being the football coach. Every time we see Laura Dern as Bob's wife, she's framed and lit to make the gold cross she wears around her neck stand out, to the extent that I was eventually trying not to laugh every time she was on screen. When T.K. and Cam start getting college offers, T.K. takes Cam the sample jersey one school sent him and says something like, "We've been praying to play college ball together our whole lives. This isn't just a jersey. It's an answer to our prayers." (I don't have the exact wording down, but it is exactly that cheesy.) Bob gets up to speak at T.K.'s funeral and starts speaking directly to God, which sort of makes sense; what really doesn't make sense in that scene is how small the church is. We see the team praying together, but only before the final game in the movie.
There are other problems with the movie too. Bob and Bev have three children: Danny is a main character since he plays football, but their younger son appears in two scenes and their daughter appears for less than a minute in the scene where Bob's in the hospital recovering from his heart attack. The end credits' mix of documentary footage and text updates make it clear that Bob and Terry, the assistant coach, are a coaching team, but we don't see much of that in the movie. Bob takes the players to the VA hospital for the day to learn life lessons, which isn't a bad idea, but doesn't fit the narrative well. The emphasis is on the team being a brotherhood, which could make for a good story, except that instead of focusing in on the actual relationships between the players, they shortcut to things like guys standing up in their team meetings (where they're supposed to share their emotions) and saying, "I love you," to the whole team and the way the team takes the field: instead of rushing out in a crowd like other teams, they walk calmly, two by two, holding hands.
The football sequences were also a problem, although I don't know if that's due to the cinematography and editing or due to the fact that I don't watch football and am not used to them. Every sequence involves a series of hits that are dramatically filmed and result in someone crashing to the ground in a way that had me waiting for a concussion or other career-ending injury that never came.
If the movie had followed the structure of the trailer, it could have been really good, but unfortunately, this was not that movie.