Boring balling

>> Gracie is a predictably inspiring soccer movie

by MARK SLUTSKY

It’s a very personal story, this Gracie. Produced and co-written by Andrew Shue and featuring the acting talents of himself and his more famous sister Elisabeth, and directed by her husband Davis Guggenheim (who also directed An Inconvenient Truth), the story is loosely based on the soccer-loving Shue family’s experiences in the ’70s and ’80s.

Yup, it’s an all-around Shue-fest. Yet with all this intimate detail to draw on, Gracie does little to distinguish itself from every other based-on-a-true-story inspirational sports movie out there. Set in late ’70s Jersey, the movie stars Carly Schroeder as Gracie Bowen, a spunky teenager with a close (weirdly close) relationship with her brother, soccer star Johnny (Jesse Lee Soffer). When Johnny dies in a car accident (as the Shue sibs’ own brother Will did), she decides she wants to become a player herself, despite a skeptical family (including dad Dermot Mulroney and a glum mum played by Elisabeth Shue herself) and the mean boys who don’t want a girl getting in the way.

Will she persist? Will she give it her all? Will she win over the player haters and the hater players? Will her dad finally see her for what she is, and get over the loss of his beloved soccer-lovin’ son? You know the answers already—though if you don’t, you may actually enjoy this movie and find it full of wonderful surprises.

Despite being fairly generic in almost every way, down to the period jukebox of a soundtrack, there is something unusual about Gracie that does merit notice. Here’s the thing: for a movie based on the filmmakers’ family, the characters in this movie aren’t portrayed so flatteringly. In fact, save for Gracie herself, the whole Bowen clan comes across as a bunch of undermining, hectoring, cynical jerks who’d like to see nothing more than for Gracie to fail miserably. Which is disconcerting, especially when you consider that Elisabeth Shue is basically playing her own mother here.

It seems worth mentioning, because to be honest, I don’t got that much to work with here. Gracie is a tepidly inspiring movie about a spunky underdog who gives it her all in the face of jerks and schmucks, and that’s all there really is to say.

Gracie opens this Friday, June 22

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