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July 19, 2009
THOUGHTS ABOUT BILLY HOYLE
It is too bad Ron Shelton doesn't make movies any more. As I speak, we are in the worst drought in the history of sports movies ever. The recent offerings - in the last five years ago - have run the gambit between unwatchable treacle to wacky, often unfunny satire. The latter gave, sadly, the best film of this unfortunate canon: TALLADEGA NIGHTS. But the "sports" in that movie is (intentionally) laughable, so its standing is a testament to the tendency to make god-awful movies about sports.
I blame REMEMBER THE TITANS: a movie I thought was perfectly okay at the time but have since grown to hate. It was enough of a success for about ten terrible movies to adopt its template. The only one that was reasonably good was MIRACLE, and even it is a good story that doesn't quite transcend its crappy trappings. I don't want to think about, for instance, GLORY ROAD or COACH CARTER.
A few thoughts on sports movies:
- Football mostly doesn't work on film. Its too hard to choreograph twenty-two people doing something that is supposed to appear chaotic, spontaneous, and exciting. At best, it appears choreographed, at worst muddled and confusing. The only good football movies, that has good football scenes (BRIAN'S SONG, the underrated PAPER LION, NORTH DALLAS FORTY, and RUDY don't count, as they are about football players who don't really play a lot of football) is the original THE LONGEST YARD - the less said about the remake, the better. Defenders of Oliver Stone's 1999 debacle can go play "Ten Yard Fight." I also refuse to listen to anyone defend the football parts of the O.C. FOOTBALL SHOW, er, FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS. Does every game have to end with some last second acrobatic drama?
- Boxing is the most cinematic sport. The three highest-honored sports movies ever are ROCKY (which won Best Picture), MILLION DOLLAR BABY (which shouldn't have won Best Picture), and RAGING BULL (which should have, and is generally in the "Best Movie ever" arguments). In the hands of capable directors, we get flicks like the aforementioned and the similarly excellent ALI and CINDERELLA MAN.
- HOOSIERS is the only basketball movie to film basketball games and make them work. Unless you count TEEN WOLF and the Jordan-esque efforts of Number 45.
- Every crappy movie ever made about golf attempts to play up a mythology that only golf fans seem to take seriously. As such, the only good movies about golf are TIN CUP and HAPPY GILMORE, which mostly point out the interesting absurdities of the sport.
- Baseball movies form a relatively mediocre genre. I think EIGHT MEN OUT is kind of a masterpiece, but not many others do. While THE NATURAL has its ardent apologists (with whom I respectfully disagree), can you think of a truly great baseball movie? I did, however, really like the baseball parts of THE BRONX IS BURNING.
Which brings us back to Ron Shelton. Shelton directed one of the best sports movies ever made (BULL DURHAM), one of the better of recent memory (TIN CUP), and one of the more dated and compulsively watchable (WHITE MEN CAN'T JUMP). Shelton at least got that once you get past all that "Wide World of Sports" crap, you have athletes who never made it and are interesting nonetheless. He realized that every sports movie doesn't have to be about the glory of the game or its ability to reconcile communities and/or racial tension.
Since the TITANS model has been proven to make mild commercial successes, we will continue to see more of this "How sports saved the world" bullcrap that systematically reduces the complexities and revises history into a story that Disney can be happy with.
Good sports movies? Anyone?
| By Andytown | 10:42 AM
Comments
Does "Color of Money" count?
Posted by: Harvey at July 20, 2009 9:56 PM
We are also in the worst drought in the history of Andytown ever.
Posted by: Julie at September 3, 2009 7:10 PM