At this point, Disney sports films seem to have given us all they’ll ever have to offer. Check McFarland, USA, in which all of the obligatory ingredients are there: the down-on-his-luck coach, trying to make a difference in both his life and the lives of his athletes, must face competitors with a lot to prove, amidst overcoming many odds. Done; on to the next one. Except director Niki Caro, known for such triumphs as Whale Rider and North Country, is not willing to rest on Disney’s formula alone. Finding emotional depth in surprising places, she lends the film a truly sweet spot at its core that ultimately makes it seem like so much more than your typical Disney-fied sports flicks such as Glory Road or The Rookie.
After losing yet another coaching job due to issues with both his temper and questionable motivational methods—he’s kind of a curmudgeon!—Jim White (Kevin Costner) uproots his family and moves them to a lower income, predominantly Latino community in California’s Central Valley. There White is hired as the local high school’s new P.E. teacher. (Yes, his surname is White and his brood just so happen to be one of the only Caucasian families in town; Disney doesn’t get any points on subtlety here.) After witnessing some of his students’ potential, he recruits a small group of them to start a cross-country team—which is where McFarland, USA’s premise separates itself from other sports stories. Not often is cross-country racing a sought after cinematic topic: it’s much more exciting to watch the action of a football or basketball game than it is to slowly witness a group of people running over long distances to a finish line. Even baseball is somehow more compelling.
Yet cross-country running is the film’s lynchpin, and Caro seems to know intuitively that there is only so much one can expect from an audience watching someone breathe heavily for an hour. Instead, she makes manifest the runners’ internal struggle—the test of endurance raging within each athlete—to energize the film’s racing scenes. There is a noticeable sense of rivalry between the other schools against whom the McFarland team competes: cross-country is considered an upper class sport in which only wealthy schools (such as Palo Alto) can excel. And so, to her credit, Caro is willing to take her material to darker places than one might forecast in a film of this nature and brand. While, of course, the PG-rated McFarland, USA is overall light in tone, moments of gang violence and stark portrayals of poverty raise its stakes, delving deeper into the emotional turmoil of its characters. The audience can begin to understand the drive for success in these kids’ eyes, and become so much more invested in them.