Good story, Not enough for a whole film

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

"Harvard Beats Yale 29-29" is a critically acclaimed film that bored me to tears. It's a shame, as this game that the film is about is among the most exciting ever played and SHOULD have been a wonderful topic. But the film is made in the most pedestrian manner--with low energy interviews, too many clips of the game itself and no incidental music or any qualities that make it appear cinematic or well polished. Aside from the novelty of seeing Tommy Lee Jones (he played for Harvard on this team), I found that the film never interested me. Now this is NOT because I hate sports documentaries--I love them. In fact the "30 For 30" series from ESPN is brilliant and highly engaging. But this documentary fails for me because it's so lethargic.

Two former powerhouses of football meet on the field 30 years after their heyday. Both teams, while generally inept, have somehow managed to compile perfect records against the other inept teams in their generally inept conference.One team plays well. The other stumbles. At the end, the inept team that was winning gives up a buttload of points to the inept team that was losing. This results in a tie.Almost all points are scored because of -- because of -- well, because of inept mistakes.A Harvard fan decides to create an inept film about this inept game and gives it the inept title Harvard Beats Yale.Outside of graduation day at the Hollywood division of the Betty Ford Clinic, never have so many minor talents had so much praise heaped on them simply for waking up and breathing.Watch this film if you like to hear people say, We tried hard; they tried hard; it broke my heart.Stay away if you like football, people who don't whine, or quality.This film gets two stars: One star because lots of eggheads got beat up that day; and one star because the voices in my head go quiet when I'm extremely bored.

Saw this at T.I.F.F. last year. It takes about 20 minutes to get rolling as you become familiarized with the 'cast'. Surprisingly Tommy Jones is well down the list of interesting interviews. The context of the times and the great archive footage make this a must see for any football fan or for the Doonesbury culture of Ivy League academia. The quotes from the ex-players are often very funny. Director Rafferty was at the actual game but unlike his father and grandfather, not a Harvard football player. The director managed to get most of the key players in the game. Unfortunately Calvin Hill, the only black player on Harvard and perhaps the most successful in the NFL of those playing in that game declined to be interviewed. Still, this film is very entertaining, captivating and suspenseful (despite knowing the final score) with the final minutes of the game providing a fitting climax to the film.

If you like documentaries that examine a memorable event and crawl inside the heads of those who participated in it to put things in context and reveal attitudes, Director Kevin Rafferty's film will score a touchdown with you.It's 1968. Yale is an all-male school with a preppy-elitist reputation. Their football team is an undefeated homogeneous group that is expected to easily hand Harvard its first defeat of the 1968 season--and dash its conference championship hopes--when Yale travels to Cambridge to play the last game of the season. The Harvard team is anything but homogeneous. It has a player recently back from Viet Nam where he survived the battle of Khe Sanh and another who is a member of the radical SDS, protesting the war and picketing campus buildings.The game is going the way everyone expected: Yale has turned the game into a 22-6 rout by half-time. In the second half a desperate Harvard coach changes quarterbacks. Things don't change much until 42 seconds before the final gun. You already know the final score; it's not much of a spoiler when the title of the film tells you the ending. It's what happens in those last 42 seconds, and the recalled memories of what was going on in the heads of the Harvard and Yale football players forty years ago, that makes the movie worth watching.These aren't polished actors with scripted lines, they are aging men recalling four decades later what was almost certainly the most memorable game they played in during their football careers. It's interesting—and sometimes amusing--to listen to and watch the reminiscences, the bravado even this long after the game, and how sometimes people remember things the way they wanted them to be rather than the way they were (like when Yale linebacker Mike Bouscaren talks about putting Ray Hornblower out of the game with a tackle). Rafferty captures all of that while inter-weaving scenes of the actual football game. Letting us listen to the former players, Rafferty makes it clear that sometimes in football, as in life, you don't have to score more points to be the winner. The title of the movie, as the film's epilogue discloses, and anyone who has read a review of the film knows, comes from the headline in the Harvard Crimson student newspaper following the game: "Harvard Beats Yale 29-29." It is understandable Yalies might not like this movie. The game was viewed as a loss by anyone that knew anything about college football. And although Rafferty didn't bring it up, even Yale head coach Carmen Cozza was quoted after the game as saying it felt like a loss. It probably still feels that way to Yale fans. To the rest of us though, this is an entertaining and insightful movie.Incidentally, the University of Florida found itself in a similar situation when it came to Tallahassee to play Florida State University in 1994. Leading its arch-rivals 31-3 going into the final quarter, UF watched helplessly as FSU scored 28 unanswered points to pull out its own 31-31 "win."