Review of The Longshots (2008) by Chads. — 22 Aug 2008

The Gracie(Carly Schroeder) of "Gracie" is actually actress Elizabeth Shue as a young girl who wanted to play soccer when soccer was a boys only sport. In the film's most stirring scene, Gracie looks at herself in the mirror like a guy would; she flexes her arm, as an athlete would, a male athlete.

"Gracie" takes place in the seventies. This scene carries the weight of a revolution in progress. Gracie is more concerned with big muscles than big breasts. In "The Longshots", Jasmine Plummer(Keke Palmer) aspires to be a model, but her Uncle Curtis(Ice Cube) has bigger plans for his niece.

He uses famous women as throwing targets, beautiful women who might be role models for a young African-American girl. Beyonce, Foxy Brown, and Tyra Banks are utilized for the drill; talented women in their own right, but sex objects.

Tyra used to be Jasmine's idol. Now that the world has opened up for her, she needs new idols. Sports give girls like Jasmine the option of being more than a pretty face with a tight body. But football? Some may argue(remember New Mexico Lobos' placekicker Katie Hnida?) that the game is sacrosanct to boys, which gives "The Longshots" a tension that other inspirational sports movies lack: animosity towards the hero.

Football's gatekeepers believe that the hegemony of boys in the most masculine of sports should be maintained. Jasmine's participation as the starting quarterback on her middle school football team is a threat to that hegemony, which makes "The Longshots" a political movie, but the filmmaker largely ignores this fact, preferring instead to focus on the emotional uplift of a dying town that the team's change of fortune provides.

What it does, it does well, but there's a glut of movies just like "The Longshots".