Last Monday’s game was soul-crushingly awful. I panicked every time the Bruins got near the net in the third period and it was clear that the Leafs did too. But I don’t know what else I expected from the Leafs, most of whom have never seen the playoffs, against the Bruins, who won the cup in 2011. The Leafs were the clear underdog. They performed as well as could be expected. I shouldn’t dwell too hard on it.
Here’s five movies that deal with underdogs in sports, who lose. Ordered from silly to serious. Perhaps you too will find some solace in losing.
Bring It On (2000)
Cheerleading is serious business. It contributes more injuries per athletes than any other sport, except polo, which has horses. Anyway, Torrance Shipman (Kirsten Dunst) is the new captain of the high school cheerleading squad, The Toros. Unfortunately she finds that their graduating captain stole all their totally bitchin’ routines from the East Compton Clovers, led by Isis (Gabrielle Union). The only reason the Toros had never been called out on it before was because the Clovers had been too poor to attend competitions. Now the Toros must redesign their entire routine from scratch.
Well this is a fluffy teen comedy and how much you like it is a function of your tolerance for Kirsten Dunst, short skirts, and gravity-defying gymnastic maneuvers. Surprisingly Dunst flips through emotions with ease, from indignation to glee to aggression. She was likable, instead of being the wet blanket she played in Spiderman 1, 2, and 3. Short skirts are usually good. The gymnastic maneuvers are sufficiently impressive. I don’t expect or ask for more from a teen comedy, and thus was moderately satisfied by the offering that was Bring it On.
Whip It (2009)
Bliss Cavendar (Ellen Page) is a small-town girl who only knows she wants to escape her small town of Bodeen, Texas. After attending a roller derby in Austin she becomes attracted to the sport’s speed and violence. She lies about her age and joins the Hurl Scouts without her parents’ knowledge, and begins training with the likes of Maggie Mayhem (Kristen Wiig) and Smashley Simpson (Drew Barrymore, also directing). Meanwhile her mother (Marcia Gay Harden) pressures Bliss to compete in beauty pageants instead. And of course, the pageant is on the same night as the championship roller derby.
Roller derbiers don’t seem to take themselves too seriously, eh? After watching Whip It, I still get the impression that more energy goes into self-empowerment and a cohesive team identity than crushing your enemies. The team tells us that this is not a bad thing. So by the end of the movie I merely felt happy for the Hurl Scouts.
As for the whimsical yet rousing cheer of “We’re number two! We’re number two!”… what a fine sentiment. If only the Leafs were number two.
The Bad News Bears (1976)
Morris Buttermaker (Walter Matthau) owns a pool-cleaning business that has fallen on hard times. To pay his alcohol bills he accepts an offer from a well-meaning councilman (Ben Piazza) to coach an exercise in diversity disguised as a little league baseball team: the Bad News Bears. Consequently, the Bad News Bears lose badly until Buttermaker taps his ex-girlfriend’s daughter, Amanda (Tatum O’Neil, youngest Oscar winner ever!) and local prepubescent bad boy (Jackie Earle Haley).
It is a cosmic law that a funny film can be made funnier by scoring it with classical music, and lo and behold, the strains of Bizet’s Carmen sound throughout. It is another cosmic law that swears and racial epithets from the mouths of babes are funny. How do you deal with a potty-mouthed miniature hooligans without hurting them or being hypocritical? There is a booger-eating near-mute, an asthmatic, and a Hank Aaron fanboy – as adults, they would be tragedies, but as children, they are merely character quirks. And just as you wouldn’t expect a team of misfits to run smoothly, director Michael Ritchie utilizes awkward silence to build dramatic tension and contrast serious missteps with regular inconsequential shenanigans.
Butterman tackles his challenges with wearied endurance, overlooking the worst of their offences and doggedly teaching the basics of baseball. For all their efforts the Bad News Bears deserve a better prize than a shiny plastic trophy.
Rocky (1976)
Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone, also directing) is a debt collector by day and the amateur boxer, “The Italian Stallion,” by night. His life is nothing special – he feeds his turtles, trains at a gym owned by ex-fighter Mickey Goldmill (Burgess Meredith), chills with his best friend Paulie (Burt Young), and starts dating the girl who works in the pet shop, Paulie’s sister, Adrian (Talia Shire). Elsewhere, heavyweight champion Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers)’s opponent drops out of an exhibition match and he scrambles to find a worthy opponent on a short notice, eventually settling on Rocky. With five week’s notice Rocky struggles to get into shape and last a full fifteen rounds with the heavyweight champion of the world.
For a movie named for the main character, I’d expect Sylvester Stallone to deliver a charismatic and earnest performance. He nails “earnest”. In demeanor, he reminds me of Tommy Wiseau’s performance in The Room. Slightly creepy, overly friendly, with period-appropriate values manifesting in the form of warning a little girl not to swear or she might sound like “a whore”.
Misgivings about Stallone’s character aside, I thought Rocky was well constructed and not too cheesy. Talia Shire presents Adrian’s slow transformation and growth of backbone endearingly, culminating in her emancipation from her brother. Paulie is also strangely captivating, as a man who expresses his desperate fear of being left behind by his friends by breaking Rocky’s furniture with a baseball bat.
I guess in some ways Rocky’s most glaring flaws are what makes it captivating. At times I didn’t know what to think of Paulie, Rocky, and Mickey: were they good guys? Were they bad guys? And that was the sort of shading needed to balance out THE classic feel-good boxing movie. .
Million Dollar Baby (2004)
Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) is a waitress with dreams of becoming a fighter. Frankie (Clint Eastwood, also directing) is a 76-year-old curmudgeony gym owner who doesn’t train girls. Eventually they team up and Maggie rises up the ranks of boxing, while Morgan Freeman narrates from the viewpoint of Frankie’s friend and gym janitor, Eddie “Scrap Iron” Dupris.
The first half of Million Dollar Baby is a sports movie. The second half is a tragedy. Million Dollar Baby is not Rocky with double X chromosomes. Just sayin’.
The Oscars may have gone to Swank and Eastwood, but I think that one should have also gone to Bryan O’Byrne as Father Horvak, the long-suffering Catholic priest whose masses Frankie has attended for 23 years to either get in touch with his Irish heritage or atone for his sins. I’m not sure which, since Frankie reads Yeats poetry by the pound and uses a Gaelic gimmick to market Maggie in fights when he finally warms to her spirit stubbornness.
Hilary Swank plays Maggie with… finality, I think. There was never a question of whether she would give up her dream, or find a manager who wasn’t Frankie. If, according to Horvak, Frankie loses himself, then Maggie succeeds in finding herself.
Anyway, Father Horvak is hilarious and indignantly says things like “You’re standing outside my church comparing God to Rice Krispies?”
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