Mal is the manager of England's homeless football team, taking his players to Rome with the hope of being crowned champions of the Homeless World Cup. He brings with them a talented striker, Vinny, who could give them a real chance at winning.
The Beautiful Game is directed by Thea Sharrock who directed Me Before You (2016), The One and Only Ivan (2020) and Wicked Little Letters (2023).
Not a whole lot going on here, it's a very typical underdog sports movie. The movie itself is fiction but it is about the real Homeless World Cup Tournament which is a bit interesting. When you read about the Homeless World Cup it's honestly very touching, it brings people together to celebrate a sport and advocates for the end of homelessness through the sport of football (or soccer for Americans).
It's unfortunate that The Beautiful Game goes for a cliched underdog type of direction rather than a more authentic one. The movie is well intentioned and there are some great moments particularly Bill Nighty who gives a very solid performance, while his character Mal isn't exactly a very investing character (Mal's backstory is incredibly basic) the performance is enough to make him one of the movie's best parts.
The biggest problem here as I hinted at before is how it's written, rather than really explaining what the Homeless World Cup is or talking about different parts of it. The viewer is stuck with a very typical underdog narrative which lead into a bucket full of sports drama cliches, it essentially trades in what could have been authenticity for a much safer and convenient path for the movie to go on.
The movie means well and has a nice message, but that kind of defeats the purpose when you really don't explore the topic of your movie all that well.
The Beautiful Game is available on Netflix.
4/10 D+
No comments:
Post a Comment