One has to be suspicious of movies released during the post-Oscar and pre-summer movie season. So, when I saw there was a new sports movie called McFarland, USA that I had not heard anything about that starred Kevin Costner, I went into it with low expectations. Sometimes, though, low expectations lead one to find a pleasant surprise, and that is what I discovered in this “based-on-real-events sports movie” about a high school cross-country team.
In McFarland, USA, Costner plays Jim White, a high school coach who has screwed up so many times he ends up in a poor California school as an assistant football coach. But after he loses that position, he convinces the school to start a cross-country team because he has noticed the endurance of many of the students who work in the fields all day and run between work and school.
Yeah, the film has a lot of sport film conventions as a Disney movie with the down-on-his-luck coach and Mexican-American students with the odds against them. But the reason spots films follow many of these conventions is because, like this one, they are real-life stories about the kind of struggles that bring us to sports in the first place.
McFarland, USA does a pretty good job with the sports scenes, but it also features excellent acting from those like Carlos Pratts who portray the student athletes. At the same time, director Niki Caro does a decent job of showing how the coach’s wife (Maria Bello) and family has to adapt to their new neighborhood too. The movie is not perfect, but it is a pretty good sports movie that probably have not seen advertised very much.
Consistent with this kind of feel-good straightforward movie, audience members liked it more than critics, although the critical reaction has generally been positive. Rotten Tomatoes gives McFarland, USA an 80% critics rating and a 92% audience rating. So, give it a chance if you are looking for a fun movie, and make sure you stick around until the end for the traditional images of the real people portrayed in the movie.
What did you think of McFarland USA? Leave your two cents in the comments.
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