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The Best and Worst Sport Films 7/7
Baseball
Worst Representation: The Fan
Robert DeNiro and Wesley Snipes are both good actors, but in another horrible baseball film, The Fan, had potential but it failed big time. DeNiro played a crazed fan of a baseball player, portrayed by Snipes. It was depressing and just not enjoyable to watch at all. You can’t help but see similarities in DeNiro’s character in The Fan to that of his own creation, Rupert Pupkin, in King Of Comedy.
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Other Notable Sport Films
Pretty much every sport has been covered one way or another in film. Not all sport films have been told in a feature film style. Some of the best have been portrayed in a documentary format. The best examples, Asif Kapadia’s heartfelt Senna, Leon Gast’s When We Were Kings and James Toback’s brutally honest Tyson narrated by Iron Mike himself.
Comedy has been used as a tool to highlight the softer side of the competitive nature in sport. Such films as Happy Gilmore, Breaking Away, Dodgeball and the classic, Caddyshack are great examples of how comedy can still achieve the ultimate goal of showcasing the dedication and desire that sport brings out of people.
Family relationship’s can play key roles in shaping it’s heroes and villains. John Lee Hancock’s The Blind Side shows that love and guidance can help a young upstart achieve his ultimate goal in life, fulfillment. On the other side of the coin, Spike Lee’s He Got Game is a great example of how a family is torn apart from a previous incident then brought back together for the wrong reasons, when their child prodigy is on the verge of making it to the professional ranks.
Sport films walk a fine line between great and dud. The best seem to be based on fact rather than fiction and the worst seem to be made with no desire or understanding of the sport it’s showcasing. Sport films will without doubt continue to be made, simply because they draw the attention they set out to achieve. Unless they are made with a love and appreciation of the sport, most sport films will always have difficulty breaking out of the realms of predictability.
- James Arthur Armstrong
