I cannot believe it has taken this long for Kevin Costner to combine two of his cinematic passions into one movie. The first is obvious: the sports film. Costner has a slate of sports films people hold in very high regard. Field of Dreams and Bull Durham, whether you like them or not, are entering “classic” territory. The other passion may not be a easily recognizable, but Costner is quite interested in race and culture relations. From his (undeserving) Best Picture winner Dances with Wolves to this year’s mediocrely reviewed Black or White, Costner really wants to let people know he can coexist with people who aren’t just white. So, McFarland, USA brings those two worlds together, and the result is about as cliched as you could possibly imagine.
But is that really a surprise? This particular sports film comes to us courtesy of the mighty House of Mouse. They have a long history with the sports film, particularly the underdog sports film. Each one is more vanilla than the last. Last year, they practically gave us another version of this story with Million Dollar Arm. Here, instead of traveling to India and seeing talent, he just has to drive to another town in California.
Okay. I’m getting a little ahead of myself here. What is this about, Mike? Well, Costner plays a football coach at a high school who has a bit of history with losing his temper, culminating in throwing a cleat at one of his players, resulting in him getting fired. He is forced to move his family out to McFarland, California, the only place he was able to get a job. McFarland has a 100% Latino community and is one of the poorest towns in America. While teaching his P.E. class, he notices a few of his students are fast. Five-minute mile fast. So, he decides to start a cross country team at the school.
The fastest runner is Thomas (Carlos Pratts) and, naturally, he is the one with the most difficult home life. His dad is fairly absent from his life, as he travels wherever he can get a job picking crops, his teenage sister is pregnant, and he basically has no hope for his future. Costner has to inspire him that he matters, and, in turn, Thomas shows him that McFarland is where he belongs. Sounds pretty routine, right?
Well, don’t you worry, because there are plenty of other stupid cliches and roll your eyes moments to be found in McFarland. You have the fat kid who is always the slowest pulling through to beat some people. You have a couple of team members quitting because their father wants them to work instead, only to be resolved one scene later. You have Costner being offered a job at another school and the not at all tense decision of whether or not he’ll stay. There’s no tension to any of it because you see all of these moments coming from a mile away.
Then there are the white/Latino jokes they go to time and time again. Everything from poorly pronounced Spanish to ordering burgers at a restaurant only selling tacos and burritos is used… And that is just the first five minutes. I know a few of these moments are going to be in here no matter what. That cultural divide does exist, but to go to it as often as they do is just ridiculous. There comes a point where Costner and his family shouldn’t be confused about stuff for the amount of time they’ve been there. So, by the time they get to a quinceañera scene for Costner’s daughter (Morgan Saylor) at the end of the second act, my patience for the amount of cultural confusion had been gone for a good thirty minutes.
The film is a crowd pleaser in the purest sense of the term. If the past one-hundred thirty-seven underdog sports movies we’ve gotten work for you, then I do not see why this one wouldn’t as well. I’ve just seen it so many times that I can’t bring myself to care. Director Niki Caro (Whale Rider, North Country) is allowed to add no personality, keeping it as vanilla as it can possibly be. The formula has been laid out, and she just had to come in and put the square peg in the square hole.
The film is not horribly made, not horribly performed, and does not tell a horrible story. It is just totally unremarkable. It will be left to the wind like the many other Disney sports movies like Invincible, Miracle, Glory Road, and the aforementioned Million Dollar Arm. If these speak to you, by all means go and enjoy some plucky kids going from zero to hero. If you are done with this formula, as I am, this won’t do anything to change your mind.
