2008 Woodie Awards
'The Rock' Acts as Convincingly as a Stone
Predictable football movie will satisfy those not expecting much.
David Scarpa
Issue date: 9/27/06 Section: Entertainment
America's love affair with football has become increasingly predominant. ESPN has started airing college games on Tuesday and Wednesday nights, meaning that for several weeks out of the year, you can watch football every day if you want to.
Hollywood has noticed this, and has obliged us accordingly. Recent football films like 2004's "Friday Night Lights" starring Billy Bob Thornton, "Any Given Sunday," and "The Program," showed the darker side of the game. Many sports movies, like "Friday Night Lights," are inspirational films about a bunch of small-town kids coming together to do something no one thought they could.
Gridiron Gang is in that 'inspirational' vein, and stars former professional wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and rapper Xzibit. It competes with Mark Wahlberg's "Invincible" to be this year's source of cinematic football inspiration.
I should point out that I am a sucker for this kind of thing. "Friday Night Lights," "Coach Carter," "Glory Road"... I love all that stuff.
I went into "Gridiron Gang" with low expectations, because I really did not want to be
disappointed. I didn't care that the acting was bad, because I knew that going in. Come on, a wrestler and a rapper playing football
coaches? Is that for real?
We should give Johnson some credit, though; he does know how to act like a coach. He did, after all, play college football at the University of Miami. A knee injury cut his career short, but not before he could make a name for himself by beating up the San Diego State University mascot.
I strongly encourage anyone with a high-speed internet connection to try and find this footage on YouTube; it is priceless.
I also didn't care that every single sports cliché found its way into this movie.
The film is based on the true story of the Camp Kilpatrick Mustangs. The team consisted of incarcerated youths at a correctional facility, and Sean Porter was the man who sought to teach them discipline through the game he loved. Sounds like the type of film where the cliché could be avoided, right? This could be the kind of gritty, powerful movie that only comes along once every decade or so, right? Wrong. It certainly had that potential, but again, it stars Johnson and Xzibit.
Hollywood has noticed this, and has obliged us accordingly. Recent football films like 2004's "Friday Night Lights" starring Billy Bob Thornton, "Any Given Sunday," and "The Program," showed the darker side of the game. Many sports movies, like "Friday Night Lights," are inspirational films about a bunch of small-town kids coming together to do something no one thought they could.
Gridiron Gang is in that 'inspirational' vein, and stars former professional wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, and rapper Xzibit. It competes with Mark Wahlberg's "Invincible" to be this year's source of cinematic football inspiration.
I should point out that I am a sucker for this kind of thing. "Friday Night Lights," "Coach Carter," "Glory Road"... I love all that stuff.
I went into "Gridiron Gang" with low expectations, because I really did not want to be
disappointed. I didn't care that the acting was bad, because I knew that going in. Come on, a wrestler and a rapper playing football
coaches? Is that for real?
We should give Johnson some credit, though; he does know how to act like a coach. He did, after all, play college football at the University of Miami. A knee injury cut his career short, but not before he could make a name for himself by beating up the San Diego State University mascot.
I strongly encourage anyone with a high-speed internet connection to try and find this footage on YouTube; it is priceless.
I also didn't care that every single sports cliché found its way into this movie.
The film is based on the true story of the Camp Kilpatrick Mustangs. The team consisted of incarcerated youths at a correctional facility, and Sean Porter was the man who sought to teach them discipline through the game he loved. Sounds like the type of film where the cliché could be avoided, right? This could be the kind of gritty, powerful movie that only comes along once every decade or so, right? Wrong. It certainly had that potential, but again, it stars Johnson and Xzibit.
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