Back of the Net

Having sat through years of formula Barbie movies, I know the plot, characters and dialogue nearly word for word, scene by scene. Cheesy geek girls, intolerable girl bully, cute but dorky popular guy, jealousy, sabotage, dancing. Australians don't talk, act or dance like this. HUGELY Americanised. My 10yr old daughter squirmed and rolled her eyes the whole way through.

In Australia, nerdy Cory (Sofia Wylie) gets on the wrong bus. Instead of science academy, she arrives at the soccer academy. She missed the boat with her semester at sea. With no other option, she is forced to stay with the soccer academy despite never played before.

The plot is lightweight. The premise is a bit silly. There are no great hurdles other than one mean girl. I'm fine with most of that except for one main issue. The problem with an underdog sports movie is that the underdogs have to have reasons to beat the overdogs. In short, the E-team girls should be secretly good at soccer with hidden-obvious flaws. Cory can fix each girl's flaw and make them excel. One girl has bad eyesight and Cory is able to catch it. One girl has bad mechanics and Cory studies biometrics to solve it. One has some sort of psychological trauma and Cory has a heart to heart. A simplistic one is some sort of superstition as a joke. As for imparting spin on the ball, it's ridiculous that soccer players don't know about that. In the end, the young actors are cute and nice. This is a weak tween movie but it is functional in that it functions as a tween movie.

A decent idea for a teen movie and alright acting but the story is simplistic, almost naive.

The plot points are weak and are almost all ineffective, nothing is followed through.

The leading girl barely even plays football/soccer in the movie, sure it is realistic but it makes her change being less important.

The sports scenes are embarrassing, not a single player can shoot the ball and there are no fakes and dribbles in the game what so ever. Goals are only scored because the goalkeepers are sieves.

Bad knowledge of the game, little to no chemistry between actors. There is no suspense in the movie what so ever.

It's cheesy and weird. The only thing good about the film is that it was filmed in Australia. The characters are unlikable and the plot is predictable. I'm sorry disney, but this ain't it.

This movie overall was pretty good. But they could have fallen in love. Also they could have started to secretly date and then been found out.

But otherwise a good movie.