Review of The Winning Season (2009) by Moya W — 06 Aug 2011

The Winning Season looks really bad on paper. It's the same premise as Bad News Bears, or any other sports flick where a crotchety coach is recruited to whip a losing team into shape. Here, the coach is Sam Rockwell. The man can do no wrong in my book, and while his movies may not always be top-notch, he always gives 100%. The team here is a high school girls basketball team.

The plot you already know, but the coach is a loser who drinks and has some problems connecting with his daughter. The team sucks, but this coach happens to be good at what he does, and they eventually start winning some games. Will they make it to the finals? Will Coach connect with his team, and his daughter? Yeah, Winning Season doesn't bring anything new to the table, but I'll be damned if everyone involved kept it pretty interesting.

All the actors here are pretty natural, and I feel it's the script that really fails them. Sam Rockwell is stuck with the predictable shtick, but the girls on the team feel genuine. A few of their problems are brought up throughout the course of the film, although the movie doesn't ever really dive into them. They're more often than not just dismissed. For a sports film, I'd also prefer if the movie focused on the sport a little more. There's never that natural progression you feel that the team is getting better. They just do, after playing a few games, and before you know it they're a winning team.

At the end of the day, the movie feels like it never really knows what to settle on. The coach and his family? His team? The actual game? The girls on the team? It's very touch and go and in the end it's just kinda "there," but the cast makes it watchable.