It appears the family sports movie has fallen out of taste with American audiences over the past few decades, deteriorating as a tentpole holding up American cinemas since the height of the style in the early 90s. Has the genre been fully explored, fully realized?
In depicting the antics of a Dallas little-league team’s brush with national fame, You Gotta Believe, isn’t breaking new ground, but the film is a serviceable, if narrow, addition to the family sports genre.
You Gotta Believe is based on the true story of the Westside All-Stars, the first Fort Worth youth baseball team to make it to the 2002 Little League World Series in four decades. Spoiler alert: The team didn’t win. But the inspiring circumstances surrounding this group of suburbanites is adapted faithfully in writer Lane Garrison’s script. The All-Stars began their series as a very average youth sports team, lacking ambitions of greater glory or notoriety. But when a player’s father is stricken by debilitating cancer, the team mines tragedy for the motivation needed to take their gameplay, and themselves, seriously.
This event was a Certified Heartwarming™ news headline in post-9/11 America rife with middle-class anxieties in dire need of tranquilization. Certainly touching as a local interest piece, as a standalone film the script struggles to use its allotted hour and forty-four minutes to say anything deeper about grief, community, or the little-league scene writ large.
Leads Luke Wilson and Greg Kinnear act as prime mediators for the range of emotions encountered in You Gotta Believe. In portraying cancer-stricken dad Bobby Ratliff, Luke Wilson brings that every-man affability he is known for to confront and constrain the mortal fears summoned in his diagnosis. In depicting the All-Star’s coach Jon Keely, Greg Kinnear brings a solid performance as a lawyer struggling to waive off feelings of boredom and unfulfillment. When Bobby’s illness is revealed, Jon is driven out of his ambivalence to protect the dignity of his ill friend, in the process finding meaning and self-confidence for himself. Although the supporting casts performances are solid (if stilted), the evolution of Jon and Bobby’s relationship is the most interesting. Through this relationship, astute viewers will find a shockingly healthy exploration of middle-aged friendship and communal responsibility. It’s an admirable depiction of a real-world friendship that is unfortunately lost in the rest of the film’s uneven execution.
Casting aside, the rest of You Gotta Believe struggles to balance the weight of its setting and subject matter. Director Ty Roberts never finds the right balance between uplifting youth-league hijinks and dour reflections of Bobby’s creeping death. Scenes oscillate rapidly between jaunty sports montages and protracted grief (ushered in by intrusive changes in the backing soundtrack), never settling on a consistent pace. The cast and plot are solid enough to deliver the film’s main point but will cause less-interested viewers to lose focus and attention.
Unlike classic big-screen depictions of youth sports, the All-Stars are not a collection of troubling-making rascals, uncouth hillbillies or aggrieved urban youth. The Ratliffs are a stable nuclear family facing uncommon tragedy. The community invested in the All-Stars is just as put together, not depicted as facing any wider fears, struggles or points of division. There are some light gestures at extant class divides, but these topics are served as seasoning for the supporting cast that are never evolved or confronted in the course of the film. In the end, what gets delivered is a message targeted acutely to middle-class audiences: everything will work out if you just believe in yourself, your kids, and your community. Many will find this message comforting — I found it grating.
The film is shot well enough but does little to differentiate its setting. Though presented as a send-up to American community, the film was mostly shot in Ontario, Canada, and uses Canada’s Labatt Park as set for the big game (the real game took place on a field in Pennsylvania). You Gotta Believe deploys a Texan filter — a yellow hue that summons visions of small-town grit — that will almost trick the viewer into thinking this film isn’t taking place in an upper-class suburb. What we’re left with is a movie that looks indistinguishable from every youth sports movie you’ve ever seen before.
Maybe I am being too harsh. Look, if you are a parent looking for a model of how to carry on in the face of grief you will find something worthwhile here, as will anyone who participated in little-league baseball between the years of 2000 and 2005. Those looking for something deeper — about loss, youth sports culture, or Dallas, Texas — may want to look elsewhere.
You Gotta Believe is playing in theaters August 30th.
