Review: When the Game Stands Tall

City Paper grade: D

If you’re the type who doesn’t recognize the evil inherent in rooting for soulless athletic automatons (hey Yankees fans!), you might glean pleasure from When the Game Stands Tall. Based on California’s De La Salle High School, whose 151-game string of victories is the longest winning streak of its kind in football history, it’s the rare sports movie that sidesteps the underdog ideal completely, insisting that a team that never loses — the faceless lugs across the line of scrimmage, in most gridiron flicks — is a team worth rooting for. It’s a risky point of view that’s more bizarre than compelling, and the cardboard cutouts filling out the roster don’t split the difference. As head coach Bob Ladouceur, Jim Caviezel spouts light Christian rhetoric and positive-thinking desk calendar quotes to his team, populated by every jock-strap stereotype in the playbook. There are personal hardships, overbearing parents and family struggles to joust with, but none are tough enough to make us identify with a national powerhouse that hasn’t botched a matchup in more than a decade. There are a handful of heavy moments, but director Thomas Carter chews them up for fuel, nothing more than hasty motivation for the kids to make crisper tackles. There is some pep in his treatment of on-the-field action, but that’s all outmuscled by sluggish storytelling and shameless product placement (who has long conversations in front of Dick’s Sporting Goods?).