Thanks to the hyped, Oscar-nominated football documentary “Undefeated,” which carefully imitates both “Friday Night Lights” and “The Blind Side,” now I understand: sports over everything.
Young felon does 15 months in prison and beats people up? Welcome back to the football squad, son, all is forgiven. Youths can’t do arithmetic? Well, that’s a problem, but only because low GPAs could keep them off the field. Racism? Useful — if it helps win a football game.
Here we have a classic pigskin prophet, coach Bill Courtney. He’s all tears and bear hugs, so slick he perspires 10W-40. His goal: to bring respect to a poor, black high school in North Memphis that loses lots of games. (The title “Undefeated” is as inapt here as it was for a Sarah Palin documentary last year.)
The appalling Courtney, who runs a lumber outfit and spouts a nonstop stream of self-help gibberish that makes the film about as bearable as an afternoon with a preowned Kia salesman, keeps saying character will be decisive. Before Game 1, with a white school, he tells his team of black athletes that “inner city” schools have a reputation for “laying down” should they fall behind, and that the team should use disgust for this racial slur as motivation. If white teams believe black ones are pushovers, that’s news to me, and no one else in the film is heard espousing this idea. But football is temporary, whereas racial animus is something you’ll always have, eh, Coach?
Later, one young rage case fresh out of the pen is seen suddenly belting a teammate in a dispute over an armrest, and the film is purposefully vague about a later incident involving an apparent assault. Coach suspends the guy for about 10 seconds. Another player, whose story is framed to duplicate that of Michael “Blind Side” Oher, receives quick tutoring from a concerned wealthy family. This proves merely that, no matter how impoverished, agile 6-foot-3, 300-pound teens have an amazing knack for making friends, but the athlete seems destined for a make-believe education (he is seen puzzling over the problem of six divided by three) from a college that will exploit his labor and pay him nothing.
The coach talks about the holy nimbus of football’s glow and a better life to come, but the idea of football as salvation — because it could be a ticket to college — is nonsense. What is a college education worth when you haven’t really had a high school education? The student athletes have such a tortured relationship with English that most of their dialogue is subtitled.
Courtney could help these young men more by teaching them a trade in his place of business, but “lumberyards build character” isn’t a cliché, so you won’t hear it in this movie. Instead, you’ll hear, “Friday night is won today,” “It’s not where you start — it’s where you finish” and “Listen to me. We can come back, men!” Offering a locker-room prayer (though everyone knows He only cares about really important contests — say, BCS bowl games and up), the coach is like Jimmy Swaggart with a whistle.
If the film had something to say about football as football instead of football as life, I’d be interested. It doesn’t. Points are shown being scored, but they’re meaningless because we don’t know why, given that not a word is spoken about zone blitzes or blocking schemes. You’ll know no more about how football games are won than you did going in. “Try really hard” isn’t a game plan.
The essence of a Hollywood movie, “Butch Cassidy” screenwriter William Goldman wrote, is “truths we already know or a falsehood we want to believe in.” This indie doc is egregiously Hollywood in spirit. That a take-charge white football coach can buck up a place like Manassas HS with some gridiron grit is a lie we want to believe.