BEFORE: I had to work Monday morning and get up early, so I couldn't start a movie on Sunday night, those are the breaks. So instead I had to watch this film Monday night, which is not technically behind, I'm right on schedule, but I just feel like I'm falling behind, so really I'm glad I still have that free day, I will definitely use it this week just to stay on track. The event on Monday was a narrative summit all about climate change, so that's an important topic and I'm glad I was there, just to be involved somehow even if indirectly, to make sure that event went well and stayed on track.
As with "The Boys in the Boat", this film covers two September topics - school films and sports films. Jesse Plemons carries over from "Kinds of Kindness".
THE PLOT: A back-up quarterback is chosen to lead a Texas football team to victory after the star quarterback is injured.
AFTER: I've said it many times, I don't know jack about football, except for watching the Super Bowl once a year. Time and experiences I've had and being busy in other areas of my life has ensured that just watching football movies as a way of learning about the sport has not worked, I have a limited knowledge. It's kind of like how I can order food in Spanish or Italian but I can't really have a conversation in either of those languages, I know the words for the different kinds of plantains, but how is that going to help me if I'm lost in Mexico or something? Thank God for Google translate, am I right? I can give instructions to the porters who work at the theaters if I just use the translating functions of the browser on my phone. Very helpful.
I remember high school, though it gets a little further away each day - I work at a college so I'm more in touch with college kids, kind of. But I must look like an elderly person to them and my co-workers, I'm sure. If I tell them I've been married for almost 25 years or put in 30 years working at an animation studio, both of those stretches are longer than they've been alive, so really that's why I joined Instagram, to start sorting through some of those memories and post pics on WaybackWednesday and ThrowbackThursday and Flashback Friday. Really I can justify posting any old photos as long as there's a hashtag for it.
I don't know much about small-town Texas, I've only visited the big cities there, like Austin and Houston and San Antonio - but we've driven through Texas twice, and I believe in this depiction, where high-school football is a way of life, also pick-up trucks and drinking and strip clubs and, well, let's assume BBQ, because Billy Bob had to get that big somehow. There's a fair amount of "fat guy" humor here, most notably Mark Lester as the overweight offensive guard, the guy who drives his pick-up to school while dipping pancakes in butter and then chugging syrup while riding next to his pet pig. I'm trying to decide if I want to be offended here, because nobody eats like this (do they?) and also the fat guy is also the dumb guy, and that's NOT always the case. OK, maybe some Texas meatheads are also shaped like Texas meatballs, but more likely this is just cheap and easy stereotyping.
By the same token, we have the handsome but also conceited quarterback, his sexually loose girlfriend who drops the QB in a minute after he gets injured to pursue the back-up QB, and the parents of both QBs for whom football isn't just a way of life, it's a religion and it's how they're going to be able to pay for their kids' college. Scholarships are assured as long as the team keeps winning district championships, thanks to the leadership of the also-stereotypical tyrannical coach, who won't let the ball get thrown to black players, apparently, as long as there are white receivers who are more deserving of glory. Yeah, I don't know about how things were in 1999 but these days if a coach wasn't playing team members of color he would be cancelled in a heartbeat. Does this really make sense, though, I mean could you imagine a basketball coach only putting white players in his starting line-up? The team would never win a game and the fans would be non-existent. I would think the same issues would apply for football.
But this is really about the back-up quarterback, Jonathan Moxon, who gets into the starting line-up when Billy Bob, the fat guy stereotype, faints or something (you know, because he's fat) and doesn't protect Lance, the handsome QB stereotype, so Lance gets injured and is sidelined. So now Mox is on a collision course with Bud Kilmer, the racist tyrannical coach stereotype. Bud claims that the Coyotes are a running team, but Mox just wants to throw long passes, and he's damn good at it, this is demonstrated early on in the film. But no, the successful Coach Kilmer doesn't want to throw a long pass unless it's absolutely necessary, because games are won by running plays, I guess. Can't they BOTH be right? I mean, the same team ideally would be able to do both, running plays and passing plays, depending on the situation, like what team they're playing against or whether it's raining and the field is muddy or, I don't know, just to shake things up once in a while. Because if the Coyotes are a "running team", won't the other teams figure that out over time and develop defensive strategies to counter-act the plays they keep relying on? Mox has a good point, maybe it's time to shake things up and play a different game once in a while and keep the opposition on their toes.
It should be noted that Mox is a strong academic student, he wants to go to Brown University, do they even have a football team? That's an Ivy League school in Providence, Rhode Island, now admittedly he applied before he became quarterback, but clearly he's on a different track, probably just wants to get far away from his parents. But it's hard to get into, so he must be smart. However, he's also a rebel, which is why he doesn't want to run the plays that Coach Kilmer wants him to. BUT he's also smart enough to not cheat on his girlfriend the minute that Darcy tries to seduce him by wearing a whipped-cream bikini. I just looked it up, Brown is NCAA Division I (formerly known as Division I-AA) which is the second-highest level of college football out there (I know, the numbering doesn't really make sense). This division has a championship, but the teams can't play in any bowl games, those are just for Division I-FBS. What a weird system.
Something like this happened in my high school, not with the football team, though. In tenth grade we had a U.S. History teacher who was old as dirt and very boring, I guess he'd been teaching so long that people kind of just forgot about him and let him be. I had a particular problem with him because I was part of this choral group that got to perform concerts for special occasions and sometimes that meant getting excused from class, and he didn't quite understand this - I sang bass, and not many tenth graders had such a low singing voice, so that meant few tenth graders were part of this group. Also when I was in his class, I kept falling asleep because he spoke in a monotone that made my eyes close. So for a few months my life was hell and I thought maybe I'd fail history class. But other kids apparently had their problems with him, too, because U.S. History should be exciting and with him teaching it, it just wasn't. I guess some kids told their parents and the parents got together and did something, because the teacher went on "medical leave", maybe to get a personality transplant, and our principal took over the class and decided to get back into teaching, and he had a loud, booming voice and suddenly I could stay awake and pay attention again.
But also, this can be seen a political film - if you don't like the plays that the coach is calling, change it up, play your own game. So your leader is an old, racist, vindictive lunatic, and it's past time that somebody stood up to him and removed him from power or at least said "Hey, what you're doing is wrong and I don't have to be a part of it." You still have to follow the rules on the field, of course, I'm not saying break the law or start shooting people, but you don't have to keep playing the coach's game. Try a quarterback sneak, or pass to a non-designated receiver. Do a dive on 25, whatever that is for you. Change the play, change your job, change your gender, be the quarterback of your own life, while you can, because the game is on the line and your life is calling and you may never be back HERE to have this level of control of things again. If you get the rest of the team to agree with you, collectively you are more powerful than the coach. He can't keep winning (so much winning, you may get tired of winning) without the players supporting him, let's all remember that.
Directed by Brian Robbins (director of "A Thousand Words" and "The Perfect Score")
James Van der Beek (last seen in "The Rules of Attraction"), Jon Voight (last seen in "I Am Burt Reynolds"), Paul Walker (last seen in "She's All That"), Ron Lester (last seen in "Not Another Teen Movie"), Scott Caan (last seen in "Rock the Kasbah"), Richard Lineback (last seen in "The Ring"), Tiffany C. Love, Amy Smart (last seen in "Crank: High Voltage"), Eliel Swinton, Thomas F. Duffy (last seen in "Super 8"), Jill Parker-Jones (last seen in "Just Married"), Joe Pichler (last seen in "The Fan"), Mark Walters, Brady Coleman (last seen in "October Sky"), James N. Harrell (last seen in "Paper Moon"), Ali Larter (last "Legally Blonde"), Tonie Perensky, Sam Pleasant, Timothy F. Crowley (last seen in "The New Guy"), Joe Stevens (last seen in "Bernie"), Don Cass, James Michael O'Brien, Mark Robert Ellis (last seen in "Hardball"), Robert Lott (last seen in "Sin City: A Dame to Kill For"), Barry Switzer (last seen in "The Turkey Bowl"), Mona Lee Fultz (last seen in "Apollo 10 1/2: A Space Age Childhood"), Kevin Reid (A), Eric Jungmann (last seen in "Not Another Teen Movie"), Bristi Havins, Jon Hyrns, Rome Azzaro, Marco Perella (last seen in "A Scanner Darkly"), Doyle Carter, Tony Frank (last seen in "Sweet Dreams"), Sue Rock (last seen in "Mr. Right"), John Gatins (last seen in "A Thousand Words"), Damian Tamburro (last seen in "The New Guy")
RATING: 5 out of 10 torn ligaments
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