An average movie

Honestly, I’m not a huge fan of sport movies, however, since the ratings for this movie were pretty good, I thought I should check it out. Since it is a Disney production, I shouldn’t expect anything really revolutionary and, indeed, it followed the rules of the genre like other similar features such as ‘The Rookie’ (which had in fact pretty much the same plot except that it was dealing with baseball) or ‘The greatest game ever player’. Still, I enjoyed most of it. Indeed, it is a rather amazing Cinderella story and it is quite endearing to see how humble Papale remained under the circumstances (at least, that’s how he was displayed in the movie). Going from absolutely nothing, losing his job, losing his wife, with no money to pay the rent, the guy managed to become a NFL player and became a local hero for a community struggling to make ends meet. I thought that Mark Wahlberg was pretty good and I wish he took more risks in his career like when he starred in ‘Boogie Nights’ for example but he still had a decent career so far. Unfortunately, like I said before, the movie still followed the usual template so you had a whole bunch of underdeveloped or unnecessary subplots like the obligatory love story, the family scenes with the coach, Papale’s friends… Still, it remains a really uplifting tale. To conclude, even though it is nothing remotely original, it is remains a well made and entertaining sport feature and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.

6/10