Remember the Titans (2000)

"You over cooking my grits, Coach." (Coach Boone)
"I'm a winner.  I'm going to win." (Coach Boone)

I think this blog is starting to really coalesce my thoughts on movies.  For this post I'm going to draw parallels between my posts on Capt. America and Rudy to hopefully make my point about Remember the Titans.  I think this is sort of the true magic of Disney.

I've spoken before about there being an absolute structure and path for basically all "sports movies" -Rudy- Remember the Titans is no different.

A Virginia town is torn apart my racial integration.
Young men, a school district, a community, and a football team are threatened by destruction
A lone wolf coach (Denzel Washington) becomes the new head coach and through hard lessons and work shows the team and the community at large the value of one's inner worth. (Oh yeah, and they win; overcoming a myriad of fiendish obstacles: The School Board, Rascist referees, and genius opposition coaching- cue inspirational sports music.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLVyhWDnSOI)

Yeah, this works on me every time.

However, this was a radical departure for Disney when they made it.  Disney hadn't made a sports movie in quite some time.  Could they pull off the genre?  What I realized upon this viewing was that, actually, Disney ensured their success by following the same four rules I outlined in my Captain America Post.

1.  They maintained a tight focus on the emotional core of the movie and our relevant characters.  There was no wasted film.

2.  They hired excellent actors:  Denzel, Will Patton, Wood Harris -yeah Avon Barksdale-, Donald Faison-Turk-, Hayden Panetteire, the big man from My Name is Earl Ethan Suplee, and wait for it Ryan Gosling.  Yeah,  Cast of studs.  Check.

3.  Excellent use of soundtrack and montages.  I think it is sort of Catch -22 with sports movies that the more actual sports you show, the less powerful and exciting the sports shots become.  So, through the magical use of soundtrack and montage, the Titans win game after game after game.  Check

4. Profit.  And they did.

Seems like Disney actually has this sort of think down to a science.

Ratings:

Dancers:  See it

Rydell High Schoolers:  Skip it

Football players:  You've all seen it

Can't stand the same sort of story you've heard before: Skip it

Hey Gurl: yup...Ryan Gosling is in this.

On a scale from, "My name is Earl Warren" to "Warren Burger King", I give Remember the Titans 3.4 out of 5 stars.