Watched: 12/05/2025
Format: DVD
Viewing: First
Director: James Anderson (I fully believe this is an Alan Smithee name for someone)
Editor's note: we've decided to Thelma and Louise our way through the remaining Chabert filmography. I've been looking to see if I can find the Chabert films I haven't seen yet via very cheap used copies or online one way or another. This one set me back about $6.10.
First, this DVD, purchased as "used" from a Goodwill had never been opened. Not since the movie was released in, like, 2003 on DVD. It was wrapped in some sort of transport wrap from the seller, then the original shrink wrap, and THEN still had the vertical AND a horizontal security stickers across the packaging intact.
This movie was produced by a Christian production company and some involved are still in movies. As I bought this on a 2000's-era DVD, it has bonus features including a full Director's commentary I really want to listen to. But, more importantly, there's all kinds of bonus content about Jerry B. Jenkins - which the DVD itself says is the most famous writer you never heard of. Apparently he's the mastermind behind this movie? And (deep sigh) the guy who wrote the Left Behind books. And a bunch of other stuff. This seems to be the Jenkins family parlaying their book money into movies.
Looking at the names, I'm guessing actor and producer Dallas Jenkins is his son. Which is interesting as he directed a movie I quite liked last year, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever. He has also been behind recent Jesus-starring shows like The Chosen. He's the Tyler Perry of Christian film. So all of this worked out fine.
But here in 2002, as near as I can tell, no one who worked on this movie had ever made a movie before. Or written a story and had someone help them work out the kinks. Or played organized sports. Or lived in a small town. Or seen a football game. Or new how food works. Or talked to a woman or girl.
It is a football movie with no one on set who knows how football looks or works on the field, during practice or anything about the culture. They seem unclear about the ethos behind organized sport. Or that if you lose a game, even if you try really hard, you still lose a game.
It is about a legendary coach that no one will listen to, and no one respects. Who, in the Alabama heat, as a rural high school football coach!, wears a full suit and a Tom Landry hat in an era when coaches uniformly wore very snug shorts with polos and visors that did their hair no favors.
The movie opens with Coach (Terry O'Quinn) telling his star player/ son to block instead of run the ball. His son goes for it instead and is flipped, landing on his head and breaking his neck. Because his son/ player refused to listen, he is dead.
I want to point out - not doing the play is not how football works. You have 11 guys. One guy can't just go rogue and not immediately lead to a meltdown of the offense. You would get benched at best and kicked off the team if you did it twice.
This will come up again and again.
Years later, the small Alabama town is dying, and the school is likely shutting down. For movie reasons, they bring Coach back out of retirement, and if the football team does well, we are told, it will save the school and town somehow. I have no idea what that means or how that will happen. But it's conveyed through the audience peeking in on the private thoughts of a 20-ish Chabert playing a high school upperclassman.
If you think this movie will be about a father grieving his son who died playing a game he coached after a lifetime of focusing on said sport - no. No grieving occurs. He does not give a shit about his son. He only brings him up to point out he didn't follow directions and died as a result.
The school gives away one scholarship in the dead kid's name every year, and so a bunch of guys sign up to play ball in hopes of getting what is apparently the only scholarship available to anyone, anywhere. What's odd is that it is not a scholarship to go play at Alabama, but one must then GO to Alabama with said scholarship. Which is great. But it kind of sidesteps the idea of excellence in high school can lead to a scholarship to many colleges.
Chabert plays Girl. She is the daughter of the Assistant Coach. And, very religious in that blissfully unaware of high school kids, she gets up in Boy's grill to tell him she's praying for him. She is also assigned to him at the beginning of the season as some sort of tribute. It's gross!
Boy (Nick Cornish) is named Elvis. Elvis is apparently a teen-drifter who has somehow wound up in this town and is living in a barn. What is happening here is wildly unclear. But *everyone* is mean to him - other kids' parents, Coach, even Chabert with her pithy prayer promises.*
Because we love a good Chabert-Connection, this movie Daniel Kranzese of Mean Girls fame plays one of the football players. Mary Pat Gleason, who was just in everything for a couple decades there, appears as a mom.
Anyway, Boy wants to play football, and movie-makers want some sort of Officer and a Gentleman thing where he can't quit 'cause he's got nowhere else to go. Curiously, Boy just @#$%ing refuses to run the plays he's given. Even MORE confusing, the team is practicing on concrete next to a chain link fence? So they keep slamming Boy against the fence? And he simply cannot follow directions.
Again - in sports at this level, a coach would have you running laps until you puked for refusing to run the play on the second go round, and would just kick you off the team by the third. Especially with no parents to come complain.
Coach keeps kicking large swaths of players off his team for the most bizarre reasons. A fight breaks out, and Coach keeps the fighting kids and kicks out the ones standing back because they're cowards. Just as a reminder, this is a Christian movie.
They're left with a rag-tag group of players, basically playing Iron Man football. And somehow, no principal appears to find out what's happening that 3/4ths of the team is gone now. After all, if the season doesn't go well, the school will close! The town will become Brigadoon or something.
Boy gets injured and I guess for reasons lives with the Assistant Coach, and the movie makes a big deal out of how boys can't be trusted, and Lacey Chabert's impenetrable pious virginity will save them both. There's a very confusing scene where, after DAYS away from his un-airconditioned Alabama barn, he returns to find a table full of unrefrigerated food that is somehow still fresh and not swarmed with flies and rats.
The movie ends with the team losing the game because their star player, Boy, threw a pity party and didn't show up til half-time, where he hears Coach's horrible speech and delivers one of his own. And then they go out there and lose, which we're told is LIKE winning because they scored some touchdowns in the second half. The town and school wither away, but it's a victory somehow... How? We're never told.
Look, I'm going to say it: I don't get why Christian film-making is so often completely incompetent. At no time did Jesus say "yea, and refuse to understand narrative structure or how characters work. And as thou go forth, forget how things and people work thy earthly realm, for in the Lord's films, pies shall not be tainted by fly nor rodent. And, yea, complete failure with no upside shall be called good, for the Lordeth hath hand-waved away the need for all but swelling but cheap music to convey thy moral victory."
Ugh.
Anyway, Chabert for her part is fine. She's probably 19 or so here and is deeply polished compared to near everyone else.
*I'm not anti-anything, but if you know religion in the South, there's absolutely an odd cultural thing where people use "I'm praying for you" as a way to make sure you know your place. Sure sounds nice coming out of their mouth! But when someone keeps saying they'll pray for you, you realize this is some condescending shit by someone who feels they have a special connection with God and they're playing middle-man for you. It's hard to explain, but it leads to people deciding to call librarians pedophiles for having books published after 1956.
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