Maria Bello and Kevin Costner star in director Niki Caro’s inspirational sports drama ‘McFarland, USA.’ (Ron Phillips / Disney)
From left, Hector Duran, Rafael Martinez, Carlos Pratts, Sergio Avelar, Ramiro Rodriguez, Johnny Ortiz and Jamie Michael Aguero star in director Niki Caro’s sports drama ‘McFarland, USA.’ (Ron Phillips / Disney)
Kevin Costner gets an unexpected housewarming gift in director Niki Caro’s sports drama ‘McFarland, USA.’ (Ron Phillips / Disney)
Kevin Costner, left, and Carlos Pratts star in director Niki Caro’s sports drama ‘McFarland, USA.’ (Ron Phillips / Disney)
Maria Bello and Kevin Costner star in director Niki Caro’s inspirational sports drama ‘McFarland, USA.’ (Ron Phillips / Disney)
An image from director Niki Caro’s sports drama ‘McFarland, USA.’ (Disney)
Carlos Pratts, second from left, stars in director Niki Caro’s sports drama ‘McFarland, USA.’ (Ron Phillips / Disney)
Carlos Pratts, second from left, stars in director Niki Caro’s sports drama ‘McFarland, USA.’ (Ron Phillips / Disney)
Maria Bello and Kevin Costner star in director Niki Caro’s inspirational sports drama ‘McFarland, USA.’ (Ron Phillips / Disney)
From left, Hector Duran, Rafael Martinez, Carlos Pratts, Sergio Avelar, Ramiro Rodriguez, Johnny Ortiz and Jamie Michael Aguero star in director Niki Caro’s sports drama ‘McFarland, USA.’ (Ron Phillips / Disney)
Kevin Costner gets an unexpected housewarming gift in director Niki Caro’s sports drama ‘McFarland, USA.’ (Ron Phillips / Disney)
Kevin Costner, left, and Carlos Pratts star in director Niki Caro’s sports drama ‘McFarland, USA.’ (Ron Phillips / Disney)
Maria Bello and Kevin Costner star in director Niki Caro’s inspirational sports drama ‘McFarland, USA.’ (Ron Phillips / Disney)
An image from director Niki Caro’s sports drama ‘McFarland, USA.’ (Disney)
Carlos Pratts, second from left, stars in director Niki Caro’s sports drama ‘McFarland, USA.’ (Ron Phillips / Disney)
Carlos Pratts, second from left, stars in director Niki Caro’s sports drama ‘McFarland, USA.’ (Ron Phillips / Disney)
Disney’s live-action “McFarland, USA” is an inspirational sports drama, which means most of us already know where it’s headed. By the time it’s all over, you can be assured there will be an emotional victory, either on the field or of the moral variety. Either way, somebody is getting hoisted on a team’s worth of shoulders, “Rudy”-style.
But what makes a good sports drama a good sports drama isn’t really the suspense (although the good ones often manage to find that, too). Rather, it’s all about the emotion. Specifically, it’s in the way the film fills in the formulaic blanks on the way to the finish line. If it does it right, it can make audiences buy into the story even though they already have a pretty good idea of how it’s all going to end.
And while the wholesome “McFarland, USA” isn’t without its predictabilities — not to mention its moments of corniness and flirtations with the maudlin — it manages to fill in the blanks nicely. The result is a feel-good, family-friendly trip film that promises drama, suspense, humor and — in a rarity for sports dramas — no small amount of modern relevance.
It’s also, in a nice change of pace, not about football or baseball or even hockey. It’s about cross-country running.
Granted, that might not seem like the most spectator-friendly of sports. But director Niki Caro (“Whale Rider,” “North Country”) clearly realizes it’s not a requirement that her audience be invested in a sport beforehand for a movie about that sport to work. What’s more import is that moviegoers become invested in her characters. With a cast filled with newcomers but anchored by Kevin Costner — as workmanlike as ever in the lead role — she makes sure they are.
By the time the closing credits roll (right after the now-standard footage of the real-life characters on whose stories the film is based), “McFarland, USA” makes the audience care about the characters, about the team and about the story. More than a few will likely find themselves misty-eyed, to boot.
The whole thing is based on the true story of high school football coach Jim White (Costner), who — after an attempted locker-room attitude adjustment involving a thrown cleat and an unfortunate ricochet into the face of one of his players — found himself one rung above unemployable in the mid-1980s.
The only school willing to take a chance on him was in the tiny southern California town of McFarland. It’s a place that proudly proclaims itself to be “The Fruitbowl of America,” but this isn’t some Norman Rockwell painting come to life. Rather, McFarland is among the poorest towns in the country.
When he moves his family in, White’s Spanish-speaking new neighbor wordlessly hands him a housewarming gift over their shared fence. It is a chicken. A live one. And just like that, he realizes he’s not in Kansas anymore — or anywhere close to his comfort zone.
As much as he feels like a fish out of water in the overwhelmingly Hispanic McFarland, his options are limited, and so he and his family try to make the most of it. Soon, though, they all realize that there’s nothing really wrong with not being in Kansas anymore.
As White learned, school was a secondary concern for many of his students, but more out of necessity than anything else. To help put food on their families’ tables, they were expected to rise before dawn and help their parents work the local fields before school. After classes, it was back to the fields once more.
These students were — and are — the overlooked and the left-behinds, the expendable and the invisible. They are the kids who all too often fall through the cracks while the rest of us look the other way.
White was one of those look-away people — until he couldn’t be anymore. With his new job posting forcing his eyes open, what he saw was a group of hard-working but happy kids whose combined years of field work had transformed them into ideal — though unlikely — candidates for the school’s first cross-country team.
“That’s a private-school sport,” Costner’s character is told at one point. “They breathe a different air than we do.”
His job: to prove that the air is the same.
And part of Caro’s job, in addition to telling an entertaining story, is to remind us that while White’s students are poverty stricken and live on the fringes — and while they might be dismissed in some quarters as cantaloupe-calved “deportables” — they are every bit as American and every bit as worthy of respect as the rich, white kids at the private schools in Bakersfield or San Jose. Or Lakeview or Mandeville. Or wherever.
That underlying theme is hinted at by the “USA” in the title of the film (which originally was titled simply “McFarland”), and Caro drives it home with a nicely conceived scene in which White’s team — and their parents — proudly sing the national anthem before a cross-country meet. What it lacks in subtlety, that scene makes up for with clarity — and it becomes hard to dismiss.
All the while, Caro is careful not to climb onto her soapbox, which would turn many a viewer off. But neither does she back away from the lessons inherent in “McFarland, USA,” including themes of dignity amid poverty, of immigration, of second chances.
Caro’s film can probably be criticized as yet another “white savior” movie, and there’s some validity to that. There are, after all, countless heroes of varying skin shades whose stories could be told as well as a white guy whose actual name is White.
But that’s an issue for Hollywood as a whole to deal with. Caro and Costner’s job here is to tell this particular story, and they do that well. In their hands, “McFarland, USA” is a winner.
__________
McFARLAND, USA
3 stars, out of 5
Snapshot: A sports drama based on the true story of a high school coach who transformed a group of underprivileged students in Southern California into an overachieving — and unlikely — cross-country powerhouse.
What works: Not only does it boast the blend of humor and emotion that all good sports dramas need, but it possesses a sense of relevance and wholesomeness.
What doesn’t: At more than two hours, it feels a touch bloated, and it flirts with being maudlin.
Cast: Kevin Costner, Maria Bello, Morgan Saylor, Hector Duran, Rafael Martinez, Carlos Pratts, Sergio Avelar, Ramiro Rodriguez, Johnny Ortiz, Jamie Michael Aguero. Director: Niki Caro. Rating: PG, for thematic material, some violence and language. Running time: 2 hours 8 minutes. Where: Find New Orleans and Baton Rouge showtimes.
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