Review of Rudy (1993) by Leif T — 17 Feb 2013

When I think of fantastic sports films, my mind jumps straight to Rudy. It has all the elements of a great sports film: Inspiring, Exciting, and All Around Great.

The story surrounds Rudy Ruettiger (Sean Astin) as he tries to make it into Notre Dame. He's wanted to go since he was a boy, but everyone has discouraged him from his father to his teacher. However, he tries hard enough to the point where he gets in, and is able to play on the football team. He get's help from D-Bop (John Favreau) and a janitor named Fortune (Charles Dutton).

There are so many fantastic scenes in the film that it would be hard to name them all, but I'll discuss the two most popular. There's a scene where the star players give up their jerseys to let Rudy play which is very inspiring, and a scene where everyone in the stadium cheers for Rudy, which is deadly inspiring.

The acting is done very well. Not much more to say, but the actors get there job done, especially Astin and Dutton, but the others do good also.

The film is fantastic, but there are some flaws I must point out. One flaw is that Rudy's goals aren't consistent. At first his goal is to get in, then it's to play football, then it's to play in a game, then it's to sit on the side, and then it's to get on the field. I feel like his goal should have been to get on the field from the start, instead of switching. I'm going to sound mean, but when he get's upset about one thing it feels ungrateful since he's gotten so far already.

I also think that there are one to many montages. It's fun to see one or two, but there's a few unnecessary ones, that feel like they could have been combined instead. It just seems like the producers wanted a big soundtrack, but at a point it feels a bit like padding.

However, these things do not drag the film down too much. It's still inspiring, and entertaining like a real sports film should be. One of the greatest in it's category.