This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 at 2:02 pm and is filed under Drama, G, Movie Reviews, NEW ON VIDEO, True Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
Director: Davis Guggenheim
Starring: Carly Schroeder, Dermot Mulroney, Elisabeth Shue, Karl Girolama, Vasilios Mantagas, Jesse Lee Soffer,
Gracie is a mediocre 70s sports film, inspired by a true story (about co-star, Elisabeth and Andrew Shue, who co-wrote and produced here) about a girl’s struggle to make her high school soccer team, in the chauvinistic 70s when soccer was not considered a girl’s sport. The character’s actions aren’t always convincing, and some of acting could have been stronger. The story starts out weak, but does improve, but not to any kind of can’t-miss-this exalted heights.
Gracie Bowen is part of a soccer-loving family, where her older brother, Johnny (Jesse Lee Soffer) is her father’s (Dermot Mulroney) favorite, until his sudden untimely death. When Gracie says she wants to play, she gets no support; not from friends, the school, her brother’s teammates nor her own family. Eventually, of course, her father, and her mother, (Elisabeth Shue) come around and if you don’t know what happens next, then you have probably only seen twenty movies in your lifetime.
This might be a good choice for adolescent female soccer players, but even if they have seen Bend It Like Beckham, they might rather just watch that again, rather than sit through this one, which was apparently inspired by Elisabeth Shue’s own adolescent soccer experiences.
