Monday, October 24, 2011

The Mighty Macs

I decided to see The Mighty Macs after seeing one commercial. It looked like your basic underdog sports movie and Carla Gugino would be the coach. What could be bad? Not much, actually. The Mighty Macs is an independent movie with a limited budget and small cast. Within those limitations, it hits the right tone and emotional cues, delivering a top-notch sports movie.

The story appears to be based on actual events. Immaculatta College in Pennsylvania, 1971. A losing team in a women's school gets a new coach and no respect. Through movie-standard grit and pluckiness, the team makes a run at a national championship in one season. The coach is almost deified - not an easy task in a Catholic school - but for once maybe earns it. Some of her players went on to be coaches themselves, win national championships and are even still active in the WNBA and college ranks.

The coach's voice-over narration provides a titch more sappiness than the movie needs but step-back in time sports cliches and old clothing styles more than make up for it with a thoroughly entertaining movie.

Oh, the name? Immaculatta. Im-MAC-u-lat-ta. Macs. I didn't get it until the movie was about three-fourths over. Until then, I thought it was some unspoken Scottish thing.

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