AT THE MOVIES WITH DILLON KIMMEL
It’s the summer of 1976, and the city of Philadelphia has little to be happy about. Corporate downsizing and citywide cutbacks have left scores of blue collar workers on the picket lines or jobless altogether. Desperation is everywhere as worker after worker is laid off with no hope of finding another job in the city. And to add to the pain, the city’s beloved professional football team, the Eagles, are in the middle of an unprecedented 11-game losing streak. Many wonder if it could get any worse.
Enter Vince Papale (Mark Wahlberg), a part-time bartender, part-time teacher who bleeds green and white for his Eagles. He’s had season tickets for as long as he can remember, and even when his team is trailing 31-0 at the end of the last game of the season, he refuses to leave the stands until the final whistle blows. Now that’s dedication. But after he loses his substitute teaching job, his wife walks out on him, and Papale finds himself struggling to cope with everything that is going wrong.
Enter Dick Vermeil (Greg Kinnear), the legendary UCLA coach who stunned Woody Hayes and the Buckeyes in the Rose Bowl. Vemeil is hired to coach the Eagles following that legendary Rose Bowl and vows to turn the team around. To do that, he holds an unprecedented open tryout. Papale’s friends urge the rec-league standout to try out, but Papale is hesitant. But desperate to get his financial situation turned around, Papale shows up at Veteran’s Stadium with thousands of other wannabe Eagles. Papale’s lightning-fast speed and good hands turn many heads, mainly that of Vermeil.
Papale is the only one invited to training camp.
Once there, he faces a very difficult uphill battle. He is in training camp, yes, but he still must make the team. And to do that, he’ll need to beat out college-conditioned athletes ten years his junior. Even his own teammates go out of their way to prove this 30-year-old rookie is an aberration. But with the help of a local media desperate for something good to report, an entire city is rooting for this ordinary, blue-collar guy. And Papale is determined to make something of his life.
Invincible follows the true story of Vince Papale, who defied the odds to make the roster of professional football team without playing a day of college ball. Papale went on to play three seasons for the Eagles, helping bring a team from the depths of the NFL stink-pool to the surface as a competitive club.
Following the long lineup of inspiration Disney movies that preceded it, Invincible is as much about life lessons as it is simple entertainment. Papale’s perseverance and humility are admirable, but the character is too dry and unemotional. We rarely see any emotion from Papale, aside from when his wife leaving him and he proceeds to tear his apartment apart. The scene is a little shocking because, up until that point, the viewers are under the impression that Papale is a passive, easy-going guy. That is, until he puts a dozen holes in the wall of his foyer and tears his phone out of the wall and smashes it into a thousand pieces. (which, puzzlingly, he uses to call someone later).
His supporting cast is also underdeveloped and underutilized. A brief fling with a recently relocated New York barwoman is never finalized and a dispute with a good friend goes untouched (although we do see him cheering Papale as the credits roll).
Complicity with the NFL and clever camera work is impressive, however. Unlike many football movies that are too far over-the-top to be believable, Invincible actually looks real. The hits look believable and the players actually seem injured when they’re supposed to be. There’s none of that no-pain-no-gain macho man talk. Not since Remember the Titans has a football movie portrayed the sport in an accurate light.
Despite the impressive accuracy, the film is a cliché from beginning to end. The underdog sports genre has been overused and is fading fast. But Disney continues to churn them out as fast as they can be made. If you’ve seen The Greatest Game Ever Played, Miracle, Remember the Titans, or The Rookie, you know exactly what to expect from this one. It’s all about the underdog, and the genre has become exhausting and far too predictable.
Five years ago, I would have thought this movie was better. But a half dozen films based on primarily the same concept is simply too many to stomach. A word of advice to Disney: change your approach. Eventually, the public will get as tired of these films as I have become. 2 ½ stars.
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