The FatMan Weighs in on - - - - - Sports Movies

by FatMan

Now that football season is upon us, it is a great time to for TBS, USA, and those other cable networks not named Lifetime to put on fare for fans. Like sports movies. However, one thing sports fans can definitely say they abhor is a poorly made sports movie. But the reasons for a poorly made sports movie are varied. If a Ben Affleck movie fails, it may be due to horrendous acting, but a sports movie can fail because they get a key stat wrong or they make up an event that never happened. That's the tough reality of making a good sports movie - you have to have a perfect balance of a gripping story, a realistic adaptation of anything that actually happened, and appease fans of all teams. It isn't easy. In fact, sports movies most free of critical evaluation are either those that touch on a fringe sport, like the cycling in "Breaking Away," or they are comedies that have little basis in reality and may involve kids, like "Bad News Bears" or "Little Giants".

Interestingly, Jackie Earle Haley was in two of those films. Just random trivia.....

My two personal favorites are "Hoosiers" and "Rudy" in that order. And even those have warts. Milan won the championship two years later than they depict in the movie, and glass backboards were not present until the late 1960's, but I could believe that Jimmy Chitwood could shoot lights out and that Ollie could dribble off his foot. In "Rudy," the real-life story doesn't end with a QB sack. It ends with Rudy getting to just play on a kickoff. And that could have been good enough, as I had cried long before he took the field. But those really are minor quibbles. After all, when stories are based on a real-life situation, they can take some license.

I say some license because taking too much license can absolutely ruin a movie. Look at the recent movie "Invincible." It's already on the FatMan's bad side because it features an Eagle, but they take so much poetic liberties that, coupled with some time-dated errors, it absolutely ruined what could have been a good movie for me. I'd rather they just used a fictional character than take Vince Papale. The movie made it seem like Papale never played football other than in the sandlot with his friends. However, he played for the Philadelphia WFL team in 1974. They made it look like Papale went to an open tryout and beat out a bunch of beer drinking Philadelphians looking to turn the team around. He didn't, he was invited to a private workout by Vermeil. They made it seem like he made a TD to beat the Giants in the last minute of play. He didn't, he recovered a fumble that helped them en route to a 20-7 win. They have Craig Morton as the Giants QB, John Mendenhall and Van Pelt on D and Walker Gillette as the WR, so why couldn't they have Kotar as the RB instead of some unknown guy named "Craig." I'm spending so much time thinking to myself, who is this Craig guy that I'm missing out on the action. Furthermore, the very first scene shows a game winding down with the tenth-second timer ticking away. In 1975 they only had full seconds on a clock. I know I'm hypersensitive, but facts are all most sports fans have to hang their hats on -  you can't just erase them.

Apart from poetic license, taking a non-athlete and putting them in a role is absolutely the kiss of death. C'mon now -  I was 8 years old in 1977 and was positive that even then I could school Robbie Benson on a basketball court. Was I the only one who wanted him to bend over and take a red-hot poker to the keister instead of having him say it to the coach? Anthony Perkins looked like he never had even picked up a baseball in his life, let alone play Jimmy Piersall in "Fear Strikes Out." Rosie O'Donnell looked more like an athlete than Perkins. Scratch that - every woman in "A League of Their Own" looked more athletic. William Bendix was chubby and that was about all he had in common with "The Sultan of Swat" in "The Babe Ruth Story." That made all three of those flicks comedies instead of what they were intended to be - dramas. Even in comedy, some things fall flat. Could you really picture Chelcie Ross as a major league pitcher, even if he was the washed up knuckleballer Ed Harris? How about Corbin Bernsen as Roger Dorn? Gary Busey as a reliever?? Where's that red-hot poker, and will it work on searing my eyes?

It goes beyond these mistakes. Sometimes it is just poor editing. "For the Love of the Game" didn't just suck because Kevin Costner was in it. It sucked because of a horrendous plot and more errors in a game sequence THAT WERE CORRECTABLE than I have ever seen. In numerous times in the game, Costner had just gotten strike 2 on a batter and the in-screen graphic would show a 2-1 count. At one point, they showed neither the Yankees nor Tigers having any hits and before the Tigers ever came to bat again, they magically had two. In the early innings of a game, one Yankee has 30 some homers on the year. When that same batter strolls up later in the game, they show him with 20. I had a feeling that Scott Green edited this movie since he obviously cares little about righting wrongs. And you know what's great about dealing with hard-core sports fans and movie lovers - you guys know who Chelcie Ross and Scott Green are. Ask your ascot wearing friends if they do...

Do I obsess about stupid things? You bet. But I take my sports seriously and I bet you guys do too. For every factually well done movie like "Miracle," you have a bunch of hack jobs. Sport is about competition, the emergence of superb performances, the agony of defeat, and the lauding of an underdog. It writes itself as a perfect script. So why do film makers have to deviate?

When I want to see a factual piece, I'll watch my favorite sports movie. I call it the "Comeback in SF." It features LT, Leonard Marshall, Matt Bahr, and a cameo by Gary Reasons, and it has my favorite line of all-time uttered by an actor named Summerall -  "Word from the bench: EVERYTHING HURTS!"

And that is The FatMan weighing in...