Does anyone remember Remember the Titans? I vaguely remember football players chanting, “Left side! Right Side!” in the rain, and a brick being thrown through Denzel Washington’s window, but that’s about it. I don’t even remember if the Titans won or lost at the end of the movie.

Maybe it’s just me, but sports movies all seem to blur together after a while. They all seem to stick pretty close to the same formula, and they’re rarely memorable.
The latest contribution to the sports movie genre is Coach Carter starring Samuel L. Jackson.

Based on a true story, Coach Carter, out this Tuesday on DVD, tells the story of Ken Carter, a basketball coach who made news when he locked his entire team out of the gym and suspended all basketball related activities because 15 of his 45 players were not meeting their academic commitments.

The stereotypical sports movie formula has four basic criteria and Coach Carter scores a slam-dunk with all four.

First on the list is a main character ? usually the coach, but sometimes the team captain ? who is new on the scene, but paradoxically, he (or she, since lots of sports movies like to play with gender stereotypes,) already has a well-established reputation.

Meg Ryan in Against the Ropes is a great example of this, and Denzel in Remember the Titans is pretty good too.
The second thing any sports movie needs is plenty of subplots.

Rookies who want more playing time show up often, so do rivalries between team members, but the most common seems to be romantic subplots.

My all-time favourite is the Bugs Bunny/Lola Bunny romance in Space Jam, (and by the way, it also has Bill Murray doing a great rookie subplot.)

Third on the list of criteria that any sports movie has to have is unorthodox (and usually unpopular) strategy on the part of the coach.

Whether it’s Coach Carter locking his team out of the gym or Paul Newman beating his opponents to a pulp in Slap Shot, all these coaches seem to have tricks up their sleeves that invariably help them to win games.

A lot of people object these criteria though. Yes, most sports movies stick to the formula, but they’re based on a true story. That’s the way it actually happened, so how can you blame it on the writer or the director?

Which brings us to the fourth component any successful sports movie needs. It has to be based on a true story. Friday Night Lights, Hoosiers, Miracle, Remember the Titans, and Cool Runnings, all claim to be based on reality, and that’s just a short list.

If it weren’t based on a true story, would anyone believe that four Jamaicans and John Candy showed up at the 1988 Winter Olympics to bobsled?

Anyway, there are plenty of inspiring true stories from the world of sports that you hardly need to make stuff up, (unless, of course, you want to see Bugs Bunny shoot hoops with Michael Jordan.)

There are plenty of exceptions to these rules. Rocky is a great example, and so are Raging Bull and Field of Dreams.

Not only do these classics break the mold, by doing so, they have become timeless in a way that Remember the Titans can never hope for.

As I said, Coach Carter has all the qualities of a cookie-cutter sports movie, but don’t misunderstand me, that doesn’t make it a bad movie. It doesn’t even make it a boring movie.

For one thing, the role is perfect for Jackson and I could listen to him shout lines and make passionate speeches all day long.

For another thing, while the movie does stick to the sports movie mold, it doesn’t feel formulaic.

It feels like that was simply the best way to tell Ken Carter’s story, and his story is definitely worth watching.

The only problem with Coach Carter is that it really does feel like every other sports movie, and in five years I’ll probably be saying, “Does anyone remember Coach Carter?”

Jamie McLeod is a Ryerson Journalism student. His movie columns can be read on andPOP every Friday.






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