Anyone out there remember when I reviewed Raising The Bar? Up until I saw this floating around on iTunes, I had mostly forgotten about it too. One look at the poster for this thing, and its synopsis about a young American athlete being sent to Australia, and I could’ve sworn that the same people were behind both films. But alas, outside of them both being distributed by MarVista (better known for all manner of LifeTime original programming), I couldn’t find any singular connection. Which is genuinely surprising because the extent to which this is essentially the same movie about a different sport is quite ridiculous.
This is director Hayley MacFarlane’s first feature-length narrative film, as she is mostly known for working on reality TV (Big Brother, Love Island, I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here), and it’s writer Eric Bergemann’s first feature-length script. Oh boy, does this feel like a first effort from both of them, as this is a highly generic and weirdly-constructed feature. Watching this film, about Peyton List’s swimmer-turned-coach trying to whip the boys’ swim team into shape, I kept getting flashbacks to the kind of films David DeCoteau makes; like A Talking Cat!?! without the former porn stars. It really does come across like this only exists just for guys to be shown shirtless for the bulk of the run time.
The acting certainly doesn’t help that impression that this is all about appearances, as there’s nothing all that special about these performances. Peyton List is okay as the lead, Olivia Nardini as her assistant/super-fan is hyperactive to the point of annoyance, Lauren Esposito (yeah, she turned up in two Aussie indie flicks this year, not sure how that happened) brings a touch of sass as the requisite rival, before completely deflating once the face-turn kicks in, and Ray Chong Nee as Coach Bodhi is a parody of surfer zen and not a particularly funny one at that.
It is too generic for words, although it’s not like that’s ever stopped me before. As far as sporting cinema clichés go, we’ve basically got everything on tap, to the point where the only real stand-out is one of the swimmers wanting to be an e-sports gamer, who is shown playing Banjo-Kazooie early on. The athletics scenes themselves are average at best (and full of doubles, because these people are clearly chosen for their impressive acting chops…), and the redemption arc at play here is not only tired, it can’t even put the right emphasis on the how and why of that redemption, breezing past them as if the filmmakers know that even a younger audience will have seen all this before in other movies.
I don’t have anything against this when all is said and done, but only because it’s so bland that it’s difficult to feel strongly about it one way or another. For the made-for-screens disposable product that it is, I guess it’s serviceable, and it’s certainly less of a prolonged headache than Hayley MacFarlane’s better-known work, but since it’s so by-the-numbers that I get intense déjà vu for a movie I barely remembered watching years ago, it’s probably worth skipping.
No comments:
Post a Comment