Sports Movies and The Mouse

I finally got around to seeing The Express, which is Disney's telling of the Ernie Davis story. Now, for those of you who don't know the back story I won't give away here. It's pretty interesting and even if you don't want to see the movie, you should at least Wikipedia Mr. Davis to get some details.

Now, as for the movie itself, it wasn't bad. I went in with fairly low expectations, which I'm sure helped... on the other hand I knew the story and how it ended, which probably did not. Thought they could have done better casting a young Jim Brown and I'm not sure if you end up liking Dennis Quaid's character or not. It was a typical Disney sports movie with lots of slow motion running, extreme close-ups of big hits, a very solid soundtrack, a sequence of someone training in the rain (it's always in the rain) and a racially divided team slowly coming together. It's their formula and it seems to work for them. If you've seen Remember the Titans, you've seen most of The Express. Personally I wouldn't put it as high up as that, but it was definitely better than Invincible. On the sports movie scale it falls somewhere around the level of Glory Road, at least on my scale. It's not Rudy or Hoosiers, I know that much.

The main problem I am finding with sports movie DVDs lately is that, since most are based on true stories, they are accompanied by a documentary in the special features section of the DVD that tells the true story. This documentary is usually better than the movie you just watched. Gridiron Gang was a perfect example of this. In the special features section, the stars of that movie are talking about how they weren't going to do the movie until they watched the documentary that followed the real team and how great that was. Well, then what the hell do I need your movie for? I'll just go see the documentary. The one for The Express also featured the director telling a very interesting story about how Davis fought with a speech impediment during his childhood, but overcame it, only to have it come back during one racial incident later in his life that made him so angry he couldn't control his stutter. It was a great story... would have been nice if it was in the actual movie, not just the special features.

-I would like to take a moment to tout one of my favorite tools, The Mouse. I was making a TV stand for my mom this afternoon and I forgot how much easier this thing is versus using sandpaper. Just does a great job for a smaller job like this one. So, of course, they don't make it anymore. Typical.