Nick Martinelli is out; Molly McGrath wants in

I finally finished watching Wildcats.

Directed by Michael Ritchie and released into theatres (by Warner Brothers) on Valentines Day in 1986, Wildcats is a football comedy that slices and dices a couple shots of the gridiron game with a pint of gender roles. After the beginning credits roll (a home video that introduces little Molly as being the daughter of a football coach), the film immediately presents the primary plot line: Prescott High School junior varsity football coach Nick Martinelli has suffered a double hernia and Molly McGrath (Goldie Hawn), the girls’ track coach, wants his job. Dr. Walker (George Wyner), the principal, informs her that he’ll talk with varsity football coach Dan Darwell (Bruce McGill) and get back to her.

Walker and Darwell are clearly supposed to reject such a ridiculous idea. A woman coach JV football? Quit pullin’ my leg. The show of non-faith doesn’t appear until after Molly out-plays Darwell in a friendly, casual game of racquetball. All three of them, plus the home economics teacher Mr. Remo (Tony Salome), meet to discuss the matter. Since Molly grew up around the game and is as familiar with its ins and outs as any qualified candidate, Darwell challenges her to be the new varsity football coach for Central High…in Chicago’s inner city.

Wildcats puts Molly on two missions now: prove that a woman can coach high school football (by winning games); turn a terrible team into a champion team. Thematically, it’s no problem. It shouldn’t be. Victory in sports (and sports films) is predominantly about more than the game itself–winning represents something. One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. Your team wins, your whole town wins. Lather, rinse, and repeat. Somewhere in the layers of genuine verbal and physical comedy, the 80s look of American life, the football imagery and action, and the question of gender, something just fell out of formation.

I said in the comments section of the previous entry that Wildcats is a terrible film. Even after watching it in its entirety, my feelings haven’t changed too much. Where did things go afoul? The writing? The directing? Maybe–Ritchie wasn’t exactly a novice in sports films when he took on Wildcats. The Bad News Bears (1976) and Semi-Tough (1977) both bore his name.

It’s not the acting. Goldie Hawn performs just fine; Nipsey Russell is fantastic as Ben Edwards, principal of Central High; Woody Harrelson gets down on the dance floor at one point as quarter-back-turned-slot-back. For their roles in the story and positions on the team, Levander ‘Bird’ Williams (Mykel T. Williamson), Trumaine (Wesley Snipes), Peanut (Rodney Hill), and Philip Finch (Tab Thacker) more than adequately fit the bill.

There are six practices (mostly consisting of standing around in practice gear and doing drills) and five games in Wildcats. The game sequences are comprised of a montages of tackles, fumbles, and touchdowns. The last game (against Prescott, huh-ha!) includes more game-play screen-time. As I watched these scenes, which I loved in all of the football movies I’ve seen so far, I noticed how unmoved I was…how unstimulated (mediocre cinematography I suppose). It was as though I didn’t care who won or lost…because Wildcats isn’t about football. It’s about the working woman, divorce, and the nuclear family.

Whether or not a woman is capable of coaching football, whether or not Goldie Hawn is convincing, and whether or not Central High’s principal gave Molly McGrath a chance because he was desperate or actually believed a woman could prevail–all of these issues are unimportant. For “appearances” sake, the film associates Molly with football enough so that the viewer accepts that she knows what she’s doing. In the scene where she and Principal Walker are talking about Mr. Remo’s qualifications, she turns to him and asks, “Mr. Remo, do you know what a nickel defense is? or an open set formation or when to use a safety blitz?”

Mr. Remo responds, “Well, I can’t say I do.”

Molly persists, “How about penetration? Do you know how to get good penetration?”

She can whip out the terminology; she can read a play book; and later on, she outlasts the entire Central High football team running laps around the field. She is (or was) after all, a girls’ track coach. She ran the Boston Marathon twice. She’s also physically fit. If her character weren’t divorced, or, if she were male, then the sports film recipe would if not work like a charm then it would at least work like a functioning light switch. Instead, it just crackles and then drools long trails of conventional views of gender. It matters not that Molly is a football coach; she could be a ballet teacher or an English teacher or a chef and the balancing of career and family would still exist.

I’ll be writing part two of my commentary tomorrow.

In the mean time, click here for a trailer and here for the opening credits and other related videos.

I also watched The X-Files: I Want to Believe on Friday night. I was a pretty solid fan of the TV series when it was on in the 90s. I used to watch it with my dad. I’m not going to talk about my thoughts of the film (other than that I enjoyed it), but I will comment on the product placement: one light blue/cornflower Toyota Matrix-looking horse-and-buggy; a few Ford SUVs. It was probably an Escape.