This movie will quickly draw comparisons to other genre films. While is does have a good amount of stereotypical genre trappings, it also puts a somewhat different feel and spin on much of the material. One of my primary interests in seeing the film were for the loosely based auto-biographical aspects of the story to Elizabeth Shue and her family. The movie is definitely a successful attempt at a simple and engaging story. It might not be quite as good as We Are Marshall or other recent inspiring sports films centered around tragedy, but it’s definitely a good film to add to the list.

Writing: While the story may be based on the soccer-obsessed Shue family and their loss, many aspects of the story were changed in favor of a different narrative and story, but the same sentiments and emotional tone. Overall, I think they did a good job with it. Some of my favorite aspects of the story are just how hard the lead character of Gracie has to work, not just to break into the team, but to even be good enough to do so. This isn’t some gifted player who knows what she’s doing from the get go. We get to see her fail over and over again, never quite sure enough of herself to know how well she’ll do. And the material between her and father is very well played, with him wanting to believe she can do it but always somewhat unsure. Even right up to the end, we see her not quite up to the challenge. In fact, the movie never implies that she would be anything more than an average player amongst the rest of the team, which is a nicely reserved and realistic approach. In fact, realism seems to be something of an obsession on this film, from the period setting to the flawed and occasionally edgy characteristics of the main character – including a casual but flawed relationship with the best friend character that helps ground it in a non-sensationalistic style.

Production: While there’s not a lot to rave about in terms of production, it is all solid across the board and everything works very well. Nothing seems lacking, and if feels like a very competent crew was put together. Overall, they seem to have been most interested in a sense of reality, by not overplaying anything for style, and it works.

Cast: Carly Shroeder, who I was pretty unfamiliar with previously (other than playing the daughter in Firewall), does a fantastic job in the lead. She pulls off the delicate balance of being capable enough to be good at the sport but not overly tomboy or athletic to make any of it particularly obvious. Her dramatic acting skills are also quite good and really make the character material work, particularly with the rest of her on-screen family. It has to be a bit tougher when you know you’re playing a character that is based not only on a real person, but one who is your producer/co-star. Granted, the character is only loosely based on reality, but you gotta figure it still had some influence on her performance. Speaking of real life characters, we get a couple of the Shue family members on screen. Elizabeth Shue takes to role that is reportedly most like the real life character – that of the mother. She does a good job with it. Dermot Mulroney does a very nice job in the role of the father. The rest of the cast does a fine job.

Music: Mark Isham does a good job with the score. It takes a little bit of similar style approach to Christophe Beck’s score to We Are Marshall, particularly with the use of percussion during games. While it might not be as great as Beck’s We Are Marshall score, it’s quite good.