An average movie

Like every boy growing up in Europe, I was fascinated by football/soccer at some point and since Pelé was the best the football player ever, I was quite eager to check it out. Well, after hearing so many great things about the guy, I was actually really neat to see so much footage showing his mighty skills. It was also quite impressive that he managed to go to 4 World Cups in a row, winning 3 of them, even if he got injured during 2 of these World Cups. Beyond football, Pelé turned out to be a major icon, worldwide but above all in Brazil but that’s a topic the movie rather struggled to deal with. Indeed, while Pelé did rule the football fields for most of the 60’s, Brazil was actually ruled by a brutal dictatorship up until the 80’s. And what Pelé did back then regarding the political turmoil in his beloved home country? Well, nothing actually and this movie never really managed to properly address this topic. I mean, of course, you could blame Pelé for not taking a stand but eventually, even if he was so much beloved, he was eventually an average guy, an adult who played with a ball for a living, not a revolutionary or a political leader. It’s actually such an interest concept, the fact that even though we always idolize such athletes (in this movie, Pelé was compared to ‘Superman’ and was considered as a ‘King’ by many), they don’t have actually some superpowers, they are all made of flesh and blood like the rest of us. Unfortunately, this movie was not really interested in this and they focused instead on hammering the fact that Pelé was amazing, which might have been true but it was not really the most fascinating aspect about this legend after all. Anyway, to conclude, even if the damned thing was rather generic, I still think it was a decent watch and it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in football.