The Greatest Game Ever Played
Studio: Walt Disney Pictures
Rated: PG
Website: http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/greatestgame/
Release Date: 2005-09-30
Cast: Shia LaBeouf, Stephen Dillane, Justin Ashforth, Peter Firth, George Asprey
Director: Bill Paxton
Screenwriter: Melissa Carter
WorkNameSort: Greatest Game Ever Played, The
The prospect of yet another uplifting, history-based Disney sports drama sounds like enough to make a grown man pull his head off his shoulders, but this Bill Paxton-directed golfing memoir is surprisingly easy to sit through. In the early 20th century, young amateur caddy Francis Ouimet (Holes‘ Shia LeBoeuf) overcomes class-based prejudice – and the disapproval of his own father – to find unheard-of success on the links, nine-ironing himself ever closer to the impossible dream of winning the U.S. Open. The underdog story is so smooth in its rabble-rousing that you barely have time to realize that Francis is essentially fighting to prove that he’ll be just as good as anybody else at excluding blacks and Jews from the game. Comic relief comes in the form of Francis’ own caddy, the plucky, portly grade schooler Eddie Lowery (Josh Flitter), who in his barrel-shaped irreverence is sort of a human version of Frank the pug in the Men in Black movies. The kid is very funny the first five or so times we get to see him run through his naturally confrontational “What are YOU lookin’ at” schtick; unfortunately, Paxton lets him work it about 10 more times beyond that. The lesson future filmmakers should take from this miscalculation is the same one most professional chefs already know by heart: Use the lard sparingly.
This article appears in Sep 28 – Oct 4, 2005.