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Some sports movies are made to entertain, others are made to make us laugh and still others are made to inspire and motivate us. What they all draw upon is the sense that through sports we find an analogy for life. In other words, to quote a recent golf movie, “A man’s grip on his club is like his grip on his world.”
The drama from the sports world easily makes the transition to the big screen because we can identify with, on some level, the struggles of the characters.
These movies are usually about overcoming obstacles, which we all have had to do at some point in our lives. Many of us have never had to prepare to fight the heavyweight champion of the world, but all of us have faced a seemingly insurmountable obstacle at some point.
Many of us have had to overcome our past and probable future, to overcome our limitations. That movie about the fighter from Philadelphia, which incidentally won the Best Picture Award in 1976, resonates so loudly with people because they identify with his struggles. “Rocky” continues to inspire 25 years later because the struggles that he faced can be transformed to our latter age; overcoming and getting stronger.
It used to be that there were more movies made about boxing than any other sport. However, it seems that recently football is now the sport of choice for filmmakers. Perhaps it is because there is so much drama in each snap. There are 11 men diametrically opposed to one another, doing battle on every snap. There is certain poetry in the ways that the plays are called and how the defense responds. Then there is the hitting, which explodes like thunder when portrayed in a movie.
“Varsity Blues” took a close examination at the fanatical approach to high school football in Texas, treating it as a religion. There is little that may be taken from this movie, in terms of life lessons, except that more loyal fans should wear whipped-cream bikinis.
When looking for life lessons in movies, you can do much better than “Necessary Roughness,” but based on pure entertainment value it is worth the 90 minutes. It featured a Quantum Leap-era Scott Bakula, the suber hilarious Sinbad and that guy that is in almost every movie that played the coach. The kicking of Kathy Ireland though, made the movie.
So maybe there are things that can be taken from this opus. Notions of age-ism were knocked down because a middle-aged Bakula found that he could succeed in a young man’s sport. Also, it leveled the playing field for women and showed that they could compete with men.
More barriers are broken down by “Remember the Titans.” Football is simply a backdrop for how people of different colors and backgrounds come together. It shows that sports can bridge divides. When people compete together they gain a certain respect for one another. This respect transcends differences. If only the ability to transcend differences could be obtained without the conduit of sports, then the world would be a different place.
But the part of sports movies that bothers many people is that they are unrealistic. Every player that is blocked in football is upended and flips through the air. The good guy always hits the home run at the end of the movie (see “The Natural”) or hits the big shot (ala Joey Chitwood in “Hoosiers”).
In reality, sports do not operate that way. A movie about Tiger Woods would feature him hitting the putt on the 18th green, for eagle of course, when he is trailing the U.S. Open by one stroke. Maybe he would hit it, but there are plenty of times when he has missed pressure putts and lost tournaments. Failure, however, does not sell.
Which brings it all back to “Rocky,” the antithesis of all other sports movies. How many people remember that Rocky actually lost to Apollo in that first fight? That fact is eclipsed by the fact that he overcame all odds, lasting all 15 rounds.
It makes everyone realize that there is more to sports, contrary to what Vince Lombardi said, that winning is not everything and it is certainly not the only thing. Winning is overrated, as long as all efforts are exhausted on the way to the finish line. That is the everlasting lesson from “Rocky,” and it is too bad that more sports movies cannot overcome the winning clich� to demonstrate how athletes overcome their limitations.
Bangor Daily News