That Championship Season

Being the second attempt to put on film an outstanding Broadway play, you would think that the producer/director would set aside egos long enough to learn something. The movie is a tedious affair with none-believable character portrayals (even for Gary Sinise, while being the best, is directed to get too drunk too soon).

Perhaps a warning flag could have been posted when Sorvino took on the roles of producer, director, actor, theme song composer, violin concerto composer and with all the out-of-work actors available, agent who hires his own relatives for bit parts (even though Ron Howard and John Travolta do this regularly, they at least produce good movies).

As an actor Sorvino is great...when being directed by others. His performance is stiff, scripted, and evokes no emotion of sympathy for the by-gone glories. By the end, the audience has no attachment or like of the characters (racist, anti-Semitic, selfish) and could care less that they have all resolved their differences and end up posing for a "happy" picture for the scrap book. Paul, go back to acting.

...and not so great for film audiences... in my opinion. Here's why...

It's not that difficult to make a good film with the source material being a good play. The problem is that the filmmakers hesitate to stray too far from the original story.

A play is written with oftentimes very obvious "on the nose dialog," with lots of repetition. Live theater audiences rarely are close enough to see the actors clearly, and so they don't have the benefit of reading facial expressions or even, as odd as it sounds, seeing the actors' lips reciting the dialog. So theatrical dialog is obvious, repetitive and oratorical.

However, that's not an issue with film. As film audiences, we're usually right in the middle of things when dialog is being spoken. Movie watchers don't need overt and repetitive dialog. There can be a lot of nuance.

So the failure with most adaptations is that the filmmakers don't make the needed adjustments, and that's where this version (I haven't seen the other) of That Championship Season fails. We're watching a movie with dialog pulled from live theater.

I do have a quarrel with the original play. Without going into details - no spoilers here - I really have to wonder why none of the four guys left the coach's house as they fought amongst themselves. I certainly wouldn't have stuck around if things got as heated as they did in this story. Maybe I'm just not willing to put up with accusations, insults and worse.

Two last things about the movie, minor things only a film geek like me would have noticed.

First, in a few low-angle shots we could see glare from a few of the movie lights placed up above the camera's field of view. The overall color of "practical" (intended to be in the shot) light was the golden color of tungsten bulbs, but the glare was very white and came not from anyplace a practical ceiling lamp would have been placed.

The second thing was the wardrobe choice for the guy who'd set his life aside for others because he wouldn't stand up for himself. He had 1950s-style glasses, a short sleeved shirt with his suit, and white socks. That was a silly, lazy way to make him look like a second class citizen.

Four former basketball teammates meet up at their coaches house after some time and remnisce (I bet that's spelled wrong) about the good old days. Eventually, it turns into a cynical, upsetting night with the only guy making sense being the alcoholic, Tom (Gary Sinise).

This was based on a stage play, so putting it into film was probably an odd experience. I never saw the original film version, so I can't compare the two. But in this film, most of what we see goes on in one location, so there's mostly dialogue. The dialogue is excellent because of the actors (Sinise, Shalhoub, D'Onofrio especially), so you'll like this if you like 'talking movies'. If you're into movies with more action, then this probably won't be for you.

Anyone who gave this a bad review totally missed the point of this movie (play). I see why this play won the Pulitzer prize for drama. It illustrates how we all look back at our youth, and possible triumphs, and paint it as much better and rosier than it was. Nothing was as perfect as it seemed, but for some, it's all they have to hold onto to give their life meaning & purpose. Also, it portrays the lengths some people will go to perpetuate a false image of happiness and perfection.

Just saw this today. I thought it was great. Wasn't too exciting, and slow at times, but I thought the story was rather good. It kept me interested and the actors acted it well. I've seen the stars of this film do better, no doubt, but they are still good here. What can you expect for a TV movie after all? I would definitely check it out, if you are interested in basketball, or perhaps high school sports. Haven't seen another quite like it, with a similar story I mean. Sorvino, I had only seen once before, in GoodFellas. I loved that movie as did most people it seems, and I'm sure he was paid far more. The rest of the cast I recognized only from later work. I caught this on Encore and thought I'd give it a chance, I don't know why. Nothing better on I suppose. Well directed, indeed.