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A REVIEW BY BOB SINCLAR 08/31/2006
Okay… it must be that time of the year again… the weather stinks, you can smell the school books in the air and Hollywood is trying to sell us our yearly dose of football flicks. The Hollywood calendar is well respected and on time then… pretty soon we’ll be seeing Saw 13 followed by a bunch of greedy producer’s cheap horror flicks then followed by some romantic comedies named “blog my ass in love” financed entirely by myspace.com, and finally followed by the annoying good-for-the-whole-f amily wizard kid and his silly fantasy crew. Throw in between the real-life-story dramas of Oprah Winfrey or some other irrelevant “personality” for Oscar nominations purpose and you can pretty much get a taste of what the end of the year is gonna look like. Once again it wasn’t a great summer at the movies, hence the need to wake up those guys with some executive kick in the balls reviewing.
I must admit that football seems to motivate directors and writers as we’ve had over the years some very good & inspiring stories told to us over this stupid game… some true, some total made up bullshit about a bunch of dudes who get to score a cliché touchdown in the very last second of the game of their lives, right before the happy ending where they go to prom and screw the prom queen (at least the quarterback and his best friend usually get some). I just love football and high school.
So I’m about to make an effort to regroup those beloved football flicks in my mind and use my one trusty Neurone to compare this new flick with them… let’s see, we have Varsity Blues (a pack of 10 young talents thrown at you for a cheap price) featuring Angelina’s dad, as the meanest bastard of a coach ever. Sunday Night Lights from Peter Berg (to be discovered as a talented singer in The Great White Hype) is a bit of the same except it’s quite insipid. Any given Sunday, despite Jamie “show-off” Foxx and some really not so great on the field shots by World Trade Center director (not the real 2001 one) Oliver Stone, has the coolest coach in any football flick, and the greatest ending I might add. Was Michael Bay assistant director on that one?... And finally I might throw in the Waterboy and The Longest Yards even if I don’t remember anything about them except that they must have been all funny because funnyjewman was in it (it’s okay guys, I’m just messing with you … the whole a la mode anti-semite complaining is funny… don’t send in Tsahal). Oh I almost forgot my favourite, Jerry Maguire, which doesn’t really fall in that category but showcases the most inspiring football story and the coolest WR in Hollywood football. Hey people you should give Cuba another chance he’s not overacting all the time!
So Disney starts this year’s Hollywood football season with a true story about Wide Receiver number 83 Vince Papale, played by Mark Wahlberg, a 30 year old philly teacher/bartender leading a tough life, who gets picked up by the NFL Eagles during an open tryout and breaks his losing streak to go on and become a successful Eagle player during 3 beautiful seasons, as we are told. Boy what an uplifting story that might be!... Not!
Stangely structured, Invincible actually feels like a 2 hour long introduction to what might become exciting. The problem is that we never actually get to the exciting part as the whole movie focuses exclusively on how Papale got picked up by the Eagles, his tough life, foreseen break-up included and the pre-season training camp life in a famous NFL team. Not that you’d get bored watching that as the 2 hours fly by quite easily. But in the end you’re gonna be frustrated of seeing almost no cool gameplay.
In this one and only interesting short sequence, director Ericson Core, who started his career as a cinematographer (the movie looks great in that area) follows Papale in his very first play with the Eagles. As the play ends and the offensive team takes over the action, the camera follows Wahlberg who exits the fields and go sit on the bench disgusted after his poor first performance. Then the camera finally pulls backwards and back on the field to follow the play which has already started. This was probably the most interesting shot of the movie, which also summarizes well the whole point of view chosen to tell this story. The focus is most definitely put on Walhberg, and nobody or nothing else really matters. Don’t expect to learn anything about Papale’s teammates or even to recognize them. Also, if you expect to see some nice football plays and some great feel good wins a la Jerry Maguire, you will be disappointed.
Thi s movie starts very well, in the wonderful year of 1975… Ericson Core, does a nice job setting up the 70’s on screen, mostly because of a well thought of cinematography with brownish colours that contrasts very well with the green Eagles uniform. The only problem I had was with those uniforms which do not feel like 70’s football equipment. I guess football players on steroids do not fit in these old uniforms anymore.
I thought the movie lacked a lot of emotion in comparison to any of the movies I mentioned above. In the image of this Mark Wahlberg on HGH, who’s just as expressive as an oyster the entire time. I suppose he kept all his energy to show off his football moves and didn’t have any juice left for the acting part. That’s a bit strange to me as Wahlberg has accustomed us to some fine acting in the past… you know like wiping out his plastic dick in Boogie Nights and so on. Anyway that is one talented actor who’s not quite convincing just as is Greg Kinnear, former E! entertainment TV host and wonderful actor, who just doesn’t do it for me as a football coach. The guy is like way too soft and his spirit lifting coach speech (obligated scene in a football flick) in the locker room falls flat with no intensity or no conviction… This is far from what we’ve seen from Al Pacino or Jon Voight in the past. The good surprise comes from supporting actors especially Michael Kelly, seen in Dawn of the Dead, and Elizabeth Banks who thankfully add some compassion to this story.
So the whole time you get hyped about seeing how this guy is gonna turn out to be with the pros but … just when you’re about ready to see some god damn football, it’s all over. They turn on the lights and ask you to get the hell out of here. I guess the rest is sports history. But, if like me, you are not a walking football encyclopedia, and you haven’t seen Papale’s big achievements on TV, then you will be left wondering if this Papale guy was ever great or not. Well there wasn’t much football in your football movie people… and by now I’m about ready to bet my left nut that Gridiron Gang featuring Pimp my Ride’s Exibit will have a more compelling story. The answer next week.
© 2006 Tom H
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