Movie #188........................."The Rivals"

Movie #188 "The Rivals" won the best picture award in the Phoenix Film Festival, and we saw this when we had bought a ticket for the best picture viewing. I'm sorry out of all the movies this one made it because there was way too much football for this viewer. The premise of this documentary was that there are two schools in the state of Maine that have been rivals for a while --- the two schools are Rumford Mountain Valley H.S. and Cape Elizabeth. What makes the rivalry is: Cape Elizabeth is a moneyed area, whereas Mountain Valley is a rural community that owes most of its livelihoods to the local mill. All Mountain Valley really has is this fantastic winning football team for years and years and years. Cape Elizabeth is busy building its team and it has money, and a coach that would love to be the other coach ---The kids that attend Cape Elizabeth all want to get scholarships to good colleges; the Mountain Valley kids will go work at the mill or some other blue collar job OR go into the service. For the first 45 minutes, I was so bored I found myself not always looking at the screen --- as aforementioned, too much football! Give the nonfootball viewer a break! (and I felt a prisoner, because I hadn't picked this movie --- it was forced upon me) But then there was a pivotal scene where Cape Elizabeth beats MV at the very end of the game, and they and their fans are so excited they don't line up and congratulate the other team, which the other team, and esp. the coach takes as a slap in the face. (and rightly so, really) So the older coach chastises the younger coach, and that interchange started the ball rolling, in my opinion. From then on, it was a bit more interesting. I guess I bought into the "experience wins out" attitude , and that motivated me to be interested in who actually won by the end of the film. Other than that, I wouldn't recommend it. I'd give it 3 stars, knowing that some people would probably like this film much more than I did because.............duh! they like to watch football! and they understand all the plays that you have to watch in this film.