Full Nelson

Who would have thought that in the middle of the longest, hottest weather we've had in New Jersey since we arrived almost a decade ago, we should have to cancel a movie due to the threat of rain. It didn't help that after a brief shower and a few cracks of thunder around tea-time, that particular evening was ultimately fine and good movie-watching conditions.

So it is time to restart our program with one of the rarest things on the planet after a tabloid newspaper with no mention of Lindsay Lohan - a movie about rugby. The only other rugby movie I can bring to mind is This Sporting Life, starring Richard Harris. But that was about the other code - Rugby League, not Rugby Union - and if you really want to know the difference, I'll explain on Saturday.

With two Academy Award acting nominations (but no win) I'm expecting some good performances. However I am filled with foreboding about the action sequences. I've written elsewhere about the difficulty of creating plausible action scenes in soccer movies, and I can provide a whole list of risible attempts (whilst Escape to Victory is recognised as laughably bad in this respect, Sean Bean's When Saturday Comes is probably worse, without including films which make no pretence of realism, like Kicking and Screaming and She's The Man).

But Rugby ? And World Cup Rugby at that ? This requires huge stadiums of african fans (probably blowing vuvuzelas) whilst the players streak across the field tackling, rolling, falling and scrimmaging in formation in support of the script. The one scene I KNOW we are going to see is the ubiquitous "let's get in a huddle and have a rousing speech" just like many American Football movies.

Morgan Freeman as Mandela ? Great. Matt 'Bourne' Damon as clean-cut, apartheid-facing rainbow warrior Francois Pienaar ? OK. Hordes of Hollywood bit players running around trying to reastically recreate top-notch Southern Hemisphere rugby union ? Uh-oh...

IMDB Parental Guide

ChristianAnswers.net Review

CommonSenseMedia.Org Review

Comments

[Mark & Ewa Elliott]

We had a blast last Sat Linda & Chris! Although we weren't sure that we'd like Invictus, it not only turned out to be an inspiring movie but we had a great time talking about movies with the others. Looking forward to the next one!