I'll admit that I was very biased for this film going in, I was rooting for it to be great. They shot the film in my home town of Ashland, Oregon. I know many people that worked on it behind the scenes. The director and I both had films in a block of shorts in the Ashland Independent Film Festival about five years ago. His film, Wow & Flutter was by far the best of the bunch. I could tell that he was on his way on to better things. It wasn't a surprise when he returned with Steve Zahn in tow to make his first feature a few years later. All that said, I am still judging this film on its own. Thankfully, it turned out to be pretty wonderful.

The titular character Calvin Marshall loves baseball more than anything in life. He wakes at the crack of dawn to hit off a tee, to run the bases and take diving slides in an empty ball field. He donates his time to a little league team, teaching the kids proper technique in how to field and throw the ball. He lives and dies for America's game. The only problem is, he really isn't that good.

At least not good enough to make the team for his junior college Bayford Bisons. His coach, Doug Little, played brilliantly by Zahn, really likes Marshall, loves his hustle and determination so much that he can't bring himself to cut the poor kid. Instead telling him he's "injured" and needs to "get better" first. Which leaves poor Calvin even more deluded, thinking that he's made the team. Calvin puts himself on an imaginary DL list, biding his return to the team by broadcasting the Bison sports show and announcing for the girls volleyball team. His world is rocked by the arrival of Tori Jensen, a beautiful volleyball ace with a dark secret. Although Calvin's pursuit of Tori is fun, the film doesn't offer anything new in the romantic-comedy genre. There is one hilarious scene where Coach Little gives Alex love advice completely in baseball analogies.


Where the film does do something new is the sports aspect. Most sports films tell a similar story, they will either follow somebody destined to be great, think The Natural or The Rookie, or they'll follow a cast of misfits who bring it together to win it all, ala The Bad News Bears or Major League. Calvin Marshall tells a new story, something I don't remember seeing in any other sports film. Having a character who is dead set on becoming great, he'd even settle for good, but simply not having the skill set to get it done. It's heartbreaking to let your dreams go, especially when we're told all our lives that if you work hard enough you'll make it in the end. Calvin works and works and works at baseball, but it isn't to be. The film mirrors his story, with that of Coach Little, he's been the great baseball player, the team star, making it as far as the minor leagues, but not quite all the way. Now that he's older, his skills have diminished and he's crushed that his glory days are over.

Steve Zahn is a bit of a revelation here, he usually doesn't get to show this kind of depth. He's in his comfort zone when he's the hilarious, foul-mouthed coach ragging on his players, but it's in the quiet moments, when he's drinking with the local burnouts or trying to pick up sad and lonely girls, that he shows a whole new side. The entire cast is very good. Newcomer Alex Frost is charismatic, holding his own as Calvin among a cast of recognizable faces. Such as Andrew Wilson as Alex's step-uncle and male-role-model, Jane Adams as Alex's aunt, and Diedrich Bader as the coach of a softball team, the only guy who truly appreciates Calvin's baseball skills. Michelle Lombardo, of Californication fame, looks the part and gets to flex a bit of acting muscles as the volleyball goddess Tori Jensen.

But really, the true star of Calvin Marshall is writer/director Gary Lundgren. For a first film and for the budget that the film was made for, it is an amazing feat. There is a definitive "Gary Lundgren style" at work here. He gets good performances out of a range of actors from veterans to rookies. He knows just how to move the camera and the film looks amazing for it. He understands how to set a scene to music and the exact moments in which to use slow-motion. While Calvin Marshall may not make much of a splash in the film world, and I only say that, because it's such a small film, I believe that Lundgren's career will be prosperous. His debut feature most reminds me of Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket, only because you can instantly tell that here is a filmmaker that despite the small budget knew exactly what they wanted to do.

Sadly you'll most likely see Calvin Marshall on video shelves, with Steve Zahn's over-sized head staring out at you. When instead it deserves to be the toast of Sundance. I bet that over the years it will gain a cult following, because the story and the filmmaking are undeniably there and eventually that will get noticed. I'm here writing this review in the small hopes that my words will encourage a few more people to see this little gem. Do yourself a favor and seek out this film.

If you've read this site before, you know I have a special place in my heart for 80's movies. Especially for the ones that I grew up with, those that I saw 50 times on HBO or burned out our family's first VCR watching over and over. Wildcats was one of those films. It had just about everything a prepubescent boy would want to see, crude sex jokes, farting, high school football, and a brief glimpse of Goldie Hawn naked. Like most films from this time in my childhood, there came a point where I stopped watching them. Discovering filmmakers like Scorsese or Kubrick, I wanted more sophisticated films. These were forgotten or regulated to guilty pleasures of the past.

Running across Wildcats in the discount bin, I had brief memories of Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes rapping about football, a kid bashing in lockers with his head, a fat guy blocking a big kick, and fancy stolen hubcaps on a VW bus. I didn't have much expectations for a well made comedy, I only wanted to walk down memory lane. Once I had it home, it didn't take long for me to pop it in. Instead of watching a copy of the classic On the Waterfront, I'd been holding on to for too long, I went with the high school jock movie I'd seen 20+ times in my past. I'll always go for the easy watch first.

The amazing thing was that Wildcats turned out to be nearly as good as I remembered. The childish sex jokes worked on a new level. The dramatic elements, about a woman wanting to coach high school football and having to do so in a bad part of town, seemed genuine. The verbal abuse, treated comically, she takes from her players, ex-husband and former boss ring true. Everything about the film is a cliché, but they're classic movie elements that work and are well executed. Goldie Hawn is at the top of her game here, she's bubbly cute, with perfect comedic timing. Her team is full of actors that went on to better roles; Woody Harrelson is the smart-ass QB, Wesley Snipes is the cocksure wide-receiver, and Mykelti Williamson is the ultimate talent, who'd rather spend his time being a criminal. The film also features great character actors, like M. Emmet Walsh as Goldie's attorney who only talks in football terms, James Keach as her manipulative ex-husband, Bruce McGill plays her sexist former boss and coach of her crosstown rivals, and Nipsey Russell cracked me up as the principle of her new school with his every utterance of the word "Riiiight."

It's most definitely an 80's movie, with awful fashions and hair styles, an incredibly cheesy music montage with the boys becoming a team, and a very young LL Cool J rapping about football. Except for the 80's setting, I think the film works better than most of today's comedies. It doesn't rely on easy pop-culture jokes and you actually become invested in the characters and their underdog story. The film has its flaws, but they're quickly forgotten as the movie moves effortlessly ahead with its solid screenplay and strong acting. The film is well directed by Michael Rithchie, who directed one of the greatest sports comedies ever The Bad News Bears, the scenes flow well and the football scenes actually make sense. If you watch a lot of sports movies as a sport fan, you'll notice a lot of over-the-top stuff that doesn't really happen on the field or even worse is when the games just aren't played right. If you're a fan of 80's and/or sports movies you could do much worse than Goldie Hawn and her Wildcats. - Grade: B (Seen on 10/10/08)

This was a film that The Sports Guy wrote about as one best sports movies of all time, but I'd never seen till now. It wasn't on HBO when I was a kid, and I never heard anything about it till I was a grown-up film geek. Which I'm surprised by, because Breaking Away is a classic sports film, with all the clichéd scenes right out of screenplay 101, while also being a touching coming-of-age dramedy. It has great performances by the four lead actors; Dennis Christopher in the lead role of Dave Stoller, Dennis Quaid as his best friend Mike, their two good buddies, the reliably funny Daniel Stern is Cyril, and Moocher played by Jackie Earle Haley in his youth-prime, right after he played Kelly Leak in the Bad News Bears films.

Dave Stoller is the best bicyclist in a small mill town in Indiana. Which is like saying he's the fastest goldfish in a tank of goldfish. He wants to compete with the big fish, specifically the Italians. He even likes to pretend he's Italian, wearing their clothing and speaking non-stop with an Italian accent, which drives his blue collar father batty. The relationship with his parents feels very realistic, you can understand why the father is upset that after graduating all his son wants to do is ride bikes and talk funny, while his mother, a romantic at heart, sticks up for her only son and his dreams. His father tries to squash them by making him work at his used car shop, but is annoyed that his son is still happy. "You're supposed to be miserable by the end of the day," he yells at him.

Dave's friends are happy to waste away their youth at the quarry, where they swim and try to show off for the college girls. One of whom, Dave impresses by pretending to be an Italian exchange student. Dennis Quaid's character Mike, likes to think he's the best athlete in town, but when he's shown up by a college kid, he's raging mad and brings his friends in on some juvenile ways of getting revenge. Their true chance comes in the form of a bike race, which Dave will anchor. But his focus is on the Italians, who are coming into town for a long distance event, where he'll finally get a chance to show his worth. His confidence is shattered when the Italians do something nasty to him, leaving his friends to pump him back up to get back on his bike.

Breaking Away is utterly predictable in all the right ways. The boys are outcasts because they're "cutters", sons of the mill workers, that don't go to college. Dave's relationship with his parents and the way he teaches his father a thing or two. Dave's love interest, and the way he lies to get her to like him. Dave's rise to the top of his bicycling world, before crashing down and rising up again. There are training sequences and music montages. It's one of those films where you know exactly where it's going at all times, but that's why you love it. The film is well made, it's genuinely funny and moving, with great acting from all the characters, good guys to love and bad guys to hate, beautiful wide-screen photography that wonderfully captures the bike races, where you know exactly what's going on at all times. It's the rare film, where everything feels just right, nothing is out place and there are no bad surprises. - Grade: B+ (Seen on 7/7/08)