Family-friendly movies with sports themes could take up a year’s worth of columns, but for now I’m recommending my new favorite sports film, “The Heart of the Game.”
This unassuming, largely overlooked documentary from 2006 is the most riveting basketball tale you will find this side of “Hoosiers” and “Hoop Dreams,” and it has the advantage over those films of focusing on the girls’ approach to the parquet floor. If someone had tried to write the ending of “The Heart of the Game” as fiction, no one would have dared make that movie.
Because modernism made us suspicious of the possibilities of a happy ending, we spend much of this film dreading a depressing outcome. No need – you, and better yet your whole team of basketball- or soccer-playing girls who see it for motivation – will find plenty of uplift in “The Heart of the Game.”
The movie follows avuncular college professor Bill Resler as he builds a winning girls’ basketball program in Seattle. The team first makes a run deep into the state playoffs, and then Darnella Russell dribbles into his gym.
Russell is black in a mostly-white school. She is a problem child carrying a big chip and the doomed look of someone about to mess up. She’s also the best player the state of Washington has seen, with Allen Iverson-style drives through the paint. Meanwhile, the girls thrive under Ensler’s silly motivational schemes, where he teaches them both to be good sports and to shout, “Sink your teeth in their neck! Draw blood!”
Resler promises that if they make it to the state championship game, every girl down to the lowliest benchwarmer will get to play. Meanwhile, Russell’s problems explode into a meltdown and a court case. “The Heart of the Game” is an incomparable lesson in hard work, loyalty, team spirit and forgiveness.
Each Tuesday, Michael Booth uncovers a movie gem for rewarding family entertainment. Reach him at mbooth@denverpost.com.
