"Don't be afraid to fail. Failure is a part of life. It's a part of building character and growing. Without failure, who would you be? I wouldn't be up here if I hadn't fallen thousands of times, made mistakes." Nick Foles, Philadelphia Eagles' quarterback
I should have had my son or son-in-law write this review, fanatic Patriots Cubs fans that they are. My interest in watching sports ranks with my passion for competitive sewing, i.e., not at all. Yet, I may be better than he to write this review on the exuberance of 2017 Philadelphia Eagles fans in the energetic documentary Maybe Next Year just because I am indifferent to the fanatic spell of fandom.
Eagles fly to their first Super Bowl championship in over half a century, and over the notorious New England Patriots, staffed by the glam Tom Brady and sleight-of-hand coach Bill Belichick. This doc has almost no voiceover because director Kyle Thrash gives it all to the fans to hoot and holler, mostly inarticulately. He does capture the exuberant fanaticism of the fans, almost every minute of the doc.
Some analysis of the quarterbacks' skills and the back-office support would have helped make this more than a shouting match.
"Shirley" is the featured fan, jumping and screaming while she laments the barren years of Eagles' losing competition. She's joined by others like the couple who built a basement shrine to the team rather than retire to Florida and the son who takes care of his cancered father so that Dad might see an Eagles' super bowl win before he dies.
A couple of times Rocky is mentioned as if to assuage my boredom at the worship of football. Rocky I can understand, for its hero represents a working-class dedication to the art of boxing, where Maybe Next Year seems to care mostly about the football win and not the art of winning.
Maybe Next Year is nectar for ardent fans like my son and his Patriots. For me, does the doc represent an advance in the art of documentary filmmaking? Not so much if drunken drooling and baseless analysis is the name of the game.
