Perfectly adorable

The film creates a perfect balance between action and depth of basic needs, in the midst of an infertile atmosphere.

Excellent characters with emotional depth. My wife, daughter and granddaughter all enjoyed it...and me, too! Very good movie! You won't be disappointed.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Inspired by the real story of a high school American-football coach and his team's participation in the 2004 season. The fall and rise of one of the most consistent team, especially after holding a record for the longest winning streak, what happens when it was broken unexpectedly? Do the players lose the confidence, coach be clueless, parents go crazy and media annoys them, is what neatly this film narrated. It looked nice to me and I had a good time, but it was too long and not inspiring as the other sports film based on the true events.From the director of 'Coach Carter', another decent sports film. I am not disappointed because I was not expecting to be a masterpiece, though not bad for once viewing. All the actors were good, especially it is Jim Caviezel's one of the major roles and he was amazing. American-football was always been an Americas sport, so I never interested in it except watching films based on them for inspiration. Especially after 'Conccusion', my interest on them dropped further.Whatever I said is not a reason to skip the film. As a film, it did the right thing to portray the real life achievers on the screen to boost the young sports persons. Only to me it was just an above average, but for many others, it is one of the best sports film of the year. Forget the American-football, what I liked was, achievements are good for our progress and make a career, but sometimes there's much more than making records in the games. So it's a good moral lesson film than a fine entertaining film. I won't recommend it, but definitely not a waste of time.6.5/10

to say this movie sucks is to say that getting run over by a bus hurts ... luckily, however, the pain involved in getting run over by a bus lasts only a few seconds (hopefully and initially) but the pain involved with this movie lasts for two hours ... i went looking for a bus about halfway thru this predictable piece of tripe ... every cliché about sports is dumped into this celluloid-crap-truck by the shovelful and reminded me of my days swamping out horse stalls by the shovelful ...you might as well go back and watch "Knute Rockne All-American", starring Pat O'Brien and some half wit hack who somehow wandered into the White House forty years later and was equally predictable and lame there as he was in this 1940 piece of crap ...if you want to sit in front of your TV and continually predict the next "plot twist" with the winner taking a shot i suppose it is functional as a drinking game ... other than that, you might as well step out in front of a hard-charging bus

The inspirational sports movie genre always musters up a successful box office receipt and draws large crowds to the theater over the weekend. From films like 'Remember the Titans' to 'Glory Road' to even 'Miracle', these movies had great performances, cohesive story telling, excellent action scenes, and a powerful message that was executed very well to pull our heart strings and entertain us in the span of two hours. I really wish that I could say the same for Thomas Carter's adaptation of the real life story of the De La Salle Spartan football team in his film 'When The Game Stands Tall'.I'm sure the studio was banking on the high school crowd to spend their hard earned money on this one, but with its bad story telling, cheesy dialogue, and terrible acting, I'm thinking this film is a few yards short of a touchdown. Director Thomas Carter has a pretty impressive resume. With films like 'Swing Kids', 'Coach Carter', 'Save the Last Dance', and 'Metro'; you know he is fully capable of making something great, but it seems like he was asleep at the wheel for this outing.'When the Game Stands Tall' follows the real life De La Salle Spartan football team where real life coach Bob Ladouceur (Jim Caviezel) has led his team along with his assistant coach Terry Eidson(Michael Chiklis) to a record shattering 151 straight wins in a row back in 2003. But the film doesn't capture the moments of their impressive winning streak. Instead it picks up around 2004, where their streak is broken due to one of their teammates being murdered before heading off to college on a major scholarship, Coach Ladouceur having a major heart attack, and another teammate who has lost his whole family and has become an orphan. It's a lot to take in, and I feel like we would have taken this journey with these characters, but the performances were all too bland.Underneath all of the blood, sweat, and tears of the his football program, is a very religious undertone, which the studio neglected to show in their trailers. De La Salle High School is in fact a very religious Catholic High School where Ladouceur not only coaches the football team, but teaches the Gospel to his students, which he incorporates onto the field as well. There is not ten minutes that goes by where we don't have a religious and somewhat inspiring speech by the coach, no matter if it is about coming together as a football team to play the perfect game, picking yourself up after a loss, or deciding to take a better job, we are hit over the head with these monologues so much so that we are taken away from the true story here.Even when the football team is forced to spend the day at a veteran rehab facility, where they see newly wounded and amputated soldiers healing, who still have the sense of humor and will to push themselves to learn to walk and talk again in order to teach these high school football players about brotherhood and picking yourself back up, you can't help but feel its cheesiness. The two plot points of the film that I thought were actually worth exploring, weren't explored at all, which was Ladouceur's wife played by the lovely Laura Dern, who does a sincere job, but given the bad script can only go so far, and is left on the sidelines, except only when she encourages her husband to take a college coaching job. The other is with one of the star football players on the team and his dad who is an abusive and mean son-of-a- bitch who thinks that winning is the only thing in life and if his son doesn't bring home the gold, he'll pay for it in bruises. Again, we see glimpses of these aspects, but it never really goes anywhere.Perhaps the one thing that Carter did extremely well here was the camera-work on the football field, which oddly enough, he had someone else direct. You can feel every hit, tackle and take down, as if it were happening to you. It's brutal, fast paced, and well edited, as you'll always be able to follow what's happening on the field. It was the highlight of the movie. It seems like Caviezel lost his ability to act in this film, as he is always an emotionless robot, void of showing any sentiment to whatever is happening around him. Chiklis is always funny and gives it his all and the rest of the football team do a decent job, but nobody is stand out. Sure, it's impressive that the real life high school football team won 151 games in a row and that the message here is a good message, but with the bland acting and its terrible script and poor execution, this game certainly doesn't stand tall.

I am a huge fan of Jim Caviezel but put off seeing the movie because I wasn't up for a sports themed movie and wasn't sure I wanted the soppy tears. The glories of football just don't do anything for me and so then to have football be meaningful? Eeehhh....However, the day came that there was nothing else at redbox. Boy, this was sure one movie I shouldn't have waited on! I even loved all the football scenes! This isn't just a sports story, it's a life story. The coach is incredible at teaching and inspiring the team, but somehow has a hard time relating to his family in the same way. He has a true and sincere desire to help teen boys become quality young men, and does a great job of it at school, but then has some difficulty doing the same with his own boys. What parent can't relate at some point to being able to communicate better sometimes with other people's children than with your own? Despite his great example and efforts, not all the boys are saints. Some are more than a bit spoiled with the fame of their winning streak. Some are phenomenal kids and they make you see why he was so determined to do what he could to help them all become the best they could be. As a football coach, he is clearly excellent, as evidenced by their winning streak. However, he was also excellent at teaching the boys that winning was not the goal, becoming the best they could be was the goal. It sounds Hallmark card schmaltzy, but it's true none the less and the method of teaching was clearly so sincere and honest that you couldn't but help wishing this guy could come to your school and teach your kids - in anything - just so that they learned from him.The school was a private religious school, the coach also taught religion. If you like to pretend that God doesn't exist and that people who believe in Him are nuts, this is not the show for you. This is based on a true story, these people have a faith and they practice it. It's in the movie. It isn't my faith but I'm always delighted to see other people faithfully practicing what they believe - principals of love and charity and faith and empathy. I do wish they had delved just a little more into some of the players lives. I guess it makes sense that for a team that big, you really can only introduce a couple of the players very well in the constraints of one movie, but still, it would have been good. Also, as one of the other reviewers mentioned, I would have liked to find out a little more about where the players who had the focus in the movie ended up in their lives. A great film, for sports fans and non-sports fans alike! Excellent actors picked for each role. I even liked Laura Dern and that is a stretch for me. Really excellent film, it kind of shocks me that Hollywood produced something this clean, inspiring, funny, and engaging but I'm glad they did!