Screen scene
By Daily Bruin Staff
April 21, 2005 9:00 p.m.
“The Game of Their Lives” Directed by David
Anspaugh IFC Films
“The Game of Their Lives” flows like a soccer game:
lots of set up, lots of opportunities to score, but few
conversions. Soccer is not one of the highest scoring games, and
missed comedic and dramatic opportunities keep the film’s
score down as well. Take this scene from the film, which could have
been very funny or very meaningful, yet turned out to be an
embarrassing combination: in a locker room at half-time, a surly
soccer coach with a very deep voice and an accent that sounds
Scottish (but don’t bet on it), enters and interrupts his
team’s pep talk to utter the line, “You have tweaked
the lion’s tail.” The lion is the 1950 World Cup
English soccer team, the tweakers are the men of the United States
soccer team, and the metaphorical tweaking is their
no-one-saw-it-coming one-point lead over the heavy favorites at
halftime. The coach is out of place among his team and his
utterance is so laughably stupid that it could have been played up
and turned into something funny. Or the coach could have given one
of those speeches that stay with you forever. But the muddle that
remains leaves the audience unsure of whether the scene was
supposed to be funny, and with a sinking sensation that it was not.
Such ambiguity plagues “The Game of Their Lives,” a
film that is not a comedy, and is neither funny nor particularly
moving, inspirational, dramatic or heartfelt ““ all of which
it attempts. “The Game of Their Lives” tells the story
of the United States soccer team’s upset over England in the
1950 World Cup. It follows a group of small-town friends, most of
them World War II veterans, who leave home for a few weeks to join
up with the big city players and ultimately form one of those teams
that nobody believes can win except for the people on it. Sports
films are for the most part reliably good; built-in themes show how
people can overcome adversity by finding inner strength or with the
help of teammates. But “The Game of Their Lives” goes
too far with the spirit of team play. Bent on avoiding favoritism,
the filmmakers do not develop any one character or plot line more
than another. The men are presented as a team rather than several
distinct individuals. This philosophy is fantastic for real-life
sports, but with movies, some characters ought to have a few more
layers than the others. This way the audience can be right there
with the players, on the sidelines as they overcome obstacles, grow
personally, and learn the value of teamwork. “The Game of
Their Lives” gives the audience cheap seats that are too far
away to see anything good. A modern-day reporter played by Patrick
Stewart narrates the story, and his grand voice makes every detail
sound very, very significant. Still in the spirit of teamwork, he
introduces several players at once so it is difficult to remember
which name and brief biography goes with which brown-haired,
brown-eyed individual. Granted, some side stories are created to
give the characters depth, but it is a wonder why the filmmakers
bothered, as the plot lines last just long enough to introduce a
personal problem and then smooth it over. Gino (Louis Mandylor),
for example, is supposed to get married on a day that the team will
be away in Brazil. Even worse, the invitations have already been
sent out. Will this cause his fiancee to leave in a “soccer
or me” huff? Unfortunately no, she is perfectly understanding
and no character in the film is faced with a difficult decision.
The players are good guys from the beginning, and great as that is,
it is just not interesting. Even the token bad guy (Gavin Rossdale
plays a snooty English soccer star), is not really bad. No one
changes over the course of the film, and that leaves the feeling
that nothing has happened. The soccer sequences are fun to watch;
yet the climactic game lacked the feeling of importance that comes
when characters have struggled to get there. The World Cup is held
in Brazil, of all places, and yet they do not find much to do there
either. Uruguay went on to win the 1950 World Cup, but that and the
rest of the tournament is left out of the film. The director seemed
so eager to end on a high note that once the USA-England game is
called, you’ve got about two minutes more of Patrick Stewart
and then you’re out of there. -Amy Crocker
