This Fighter Made Her Goals Literal
Studies have shown that when women participate in high school athletics, they increase their chances of graduating from high school, reduce their risk of cancer, and even lower their likelihood of unwanted pregnancy. These are all good things, and though they rarely explain why young girls actually play team sports, they are much more plausible than avenging the death of a beloved older brother.
But that is just the plot of "Gracie," a well intentioned but poorly executed film about a girl who fights to take her brother's spot on the boys' soccer team after he is killed in a car accident. It is based on the real-life experiences of the Shue children, specifically actors Andrew and Elisabeth, who lost their brother William to a tragic accident in 1988. The two celebrity siblings appear in the film as Gracie's coach and mother, respectively, and brother John helped with financing. Andrew played professional soccer after appearing on "Melrose Place" and Elisabeth's interest in soccer as a child in her male-dominated family obviously contributed to the plot.
Despite — or perhaps on account of — their proximity to the project, "Gracie" fails to reach its goals. The title character, played by Carly Schroeder, is a teenager who shares a love of soccer with her father and three brothers, but is discouraged from nurturing that love by those same people, as well as seemingly every other person in New Jersey. Her only supporter is her older brother Johnny (Jesse Lee Soffer), who defends Gracie at every turn and speaks solely in euphemisms. When Johnny, a varsity soccer star, dies suddenly, Gracie decides the only proper reaction is to play on the men's team and score the winning goal against rival Kingston — her brother's lost dream.
She has nary the practice, strength, or support to make the team, but Gracie won't be denied. She eventually wins over her formerly sexist father (Dermot Mulroney), and they begin to train for tryouts. Her pursuit of equality, more than her interest in soccer, seems to spur her on.
Gracie's angry determinism is a theme throughout the film, which does not inspire the love of sport nor the innate excitement that typify most successful sport films. The Shues' message of equal opportunity is so unwavering that it often veers into comedy.
Director Davis Guggenheim, Ms. Shue's husband, brings the same subtle approach from his work on the Al Gore climate change polemic "An Inconvenient Truth" here. "Gracie" is full of straw men meant to underscore its heroine's determination, but they often produce the opposite effect.
Gracie doesn't just have to fight her physical limitations to play on the highly competitive boys' team — she's up against the abject sexism of everyone in South Orange, as well. Even her mother, played with a look of pained constipation by Ms. Shue, jumps in on the girl-hating. Ms. Shue demonstrates her own detachment from the character when she grimaces through this winning advice on what it's like being a girl: "Life is one big s--- sandwich and we've all got to take a bite."
Only Mr. Mulroney begins to make the drama come to life. Once he gets over his inexplicable sexism toward his daughter — and stops sitting by as his obnoxious children belittle her — he begins to make his two-dimensional character look like a real, and often sympathetic, person. Ms. Schroeder has the looks, athleticism, and presence to carry off the role of a powerful young soccer player, but the tedious screenplay keeps her from dominating the screen the way she should. Gracie is alternatingly stubborn, whiny, misguided, and pigheaded.
The case for women playing soccer was made much more convincingly in the 2002 Keira Knightley launching-pad "Bend It Like Beckham." There, director Gurinder Chadha used the sport to juxtapose competing cultures. The result was an inspirational story about a young woman who struggles against tradition and the expectations of her family to fulfill her dream. In comparison, "Gracie" looks like a humorless bit of affirmative action.
The manufactured hurdles in Gracie's way — and even her ambition to score the winning goal against Kingston — have a forced element that deflects from the noble message. Unable even to practice soccer before her brother's death, Gracie is supposed to be able to dominate the men's varsity team after training with her newly enlightened father for only one summer. Gracie's quest is lonely, desperate, and eventually a letdown. And the plot additions that turn 1978 New Jersey into a bastion of outright sexism are disingenuous at worst and distracting at best.
The Shue family clearly feels strongly about equality, but "Gracie" fails to demonstrate the positive effects of competitive sports on young women. Whereas "Bend It Like Beckham" showed the restorative power of sports in a young girl's life, "Gracie" spends its time dwelling on nasty sandwiches.
