Gracie (2007)

I love this movie so much

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

This movie is inspired by (and thus LOOSELY based) on producer/actress Elisabeth Shue's life. So coming from the fact its producers are actual soccer players, I wanted to love it. I didn't love it, but I did like it.While this movie is a "soccer" movie, in my eyes, it is really a movie more about a family - esp. the main character Gracie - dealing with the death of a loved one (her brother). It shows how different characters deal or avoid dealing with their grief. Gracie eventually turns to one of the things she used to love to share with her brother - soccer. Soccer is also something that her dad and her brother shared, so Gracie and her dad reconnect through the sport.As a drama addressing the challenge of growing up as a female athlete a few decades earlier, I give it an 7.5/10. Some people on this Message Board want to bash it as a man-hating message, but you have to remember that this movie is NOT trying to represent girls' athletics today - in 2007. It is representing how it was practically 30 years ago, when it WAS tough to have an equal shot at sports. They did a decent job.As a drama dealing with death, I give it an 8/10. A lot of the character's grief is portrayed through action, not dialogue, which worked pretty well. However, with so much build-up, I was waiting for more of an emotional punch and it didn't quite come full circle.As soccer movie, I give it a 7/10. Given that I love soccer, I'm probably harshest on that. I will say the soccer is more realistic than a lot of soccer movies out there. But they definitely take some creative license with the rules of the game. There seems to be a lot of irresponsible coaches and ref's in this movie. The parking lot/backlot soccer seems most realistic to me.If you like soccer OR dramas, I recommend this movie.

This nice, small movie is a product of the Shue family of soccer fame. Siblings Andrew and Elizabeth Shue are among the producers, husband of Elizabeth is the director, and the screenplay is based on Andrew's story. In fact, the whole story is loosely based on their own family as the Shue kids grew up. Carly Schroeder is Grace Bowen (Elizabeth Shue character), only daughter, of Bryan Bowen (Dermot Mulroney). Her brother is the local high school soccer star but, after barely losing to their rivals, he gets killed in a car wreck. Dad is devastated, but sister Gracie wants to play soccer. There is no girls' soccer at their school, so she has to use a title 9 approach and petition the school board to let her even try out. Elizabeth Shue plays the mother, Lindsay Bowen. Andrew Shue plays a soccer coach.This isn't a great movie, but it is a very nice one. I especially enjoy movies based on real events, like this one was. SPOILERS: Gracie in try-outs made a good impression but was not fast enough or tough enough for varsity, and was put on the JV team. However, when the rivals came to town, coach asked her to sit on the bench as moral support, wearing her dead brother's old jersey. Coach had seen her practicing free kicks late at night, and put her in with the game on the line in OT. Her free kick just missed the mark, but she stayed in, and eventually used a move her dad had showed her to score and win the game.

Few films depict the texture of the time the late 60s & early 70s, and the paradoxes of that age captured female teenagers. This coming-of-age, while your family is in emotional tailspin does that and much more. I was ready for a soccer story-and 'feel good' film-but found myself moved. Despite the fact that I find soccer boring, and question the intelligence behind many co-ed-by-law activities, I found this film engaging. It is more 'realistic' than the average film because there are aspects in this film that everyone who has been through-or is going through the teen years can relate to--and at many levels. Though I don't normally notice the sound track: this one 'fit' the era to a "T" The movies have promoted myths about that era: not everyone dwelt in the sexual license and drug use of the era-nor did every dad worked for "Big Blue" and not every mom stayed home and had her cocktails. This movie reflects most of the families I knew. This film captured our despairs and our fondest dreams in a human fashion - KUDOS!!!!

'Gracie' is a movie about a girl who gets on the varsity boys soccer team after her brother, Johnny Bowen (Jesse Lee Soffer) who was the team star, dies in a car accident. Based on an experience of the Shue family, it has Elizabeth Shue playing Gracie's mother and another Shue, Andrew, as Coach Clark. Gracie Bowen is played by Carly Schroeder, who projects energy and guts, as the role requires. Dermot Mulroney is her father, Bryan Bowen, a former soccer player and a bit of a star in his time himself, but with childhood issues that give him some trouble as a parent. He has coached the family boys as if soccer, for all of them, has always been the only thing, while Gracie was protected but overlooked. But the fact that she nails a shot, on a bet, with bare feet in the opening sequence shows she's got the potential to be a star herself. Her struggle to be accepted at a time when girls didn't play soccer in America (this takes place in the late Seventies) is a way of moving forward when a kind of opening appears; it's also a chance for the family to redeem itself and progressing beyond its grief.'Gracie's' final trajectory leads (somewhat implausibly) to a predictable final big game triumph; but what makes the body of the movie different and good is its focus on training--the training, moreover, of a female athlete, and her endless struggle to prove herself. The story is more about the discipline of sport, the long hard process of conditioning, than the drama of games and wins. Gracie first has to convince her father to coach her despite his not unnatural concern that she isn't tough enough to play against boys. Her mother tells her she must be content as a girl with being second best. She doesn't buy that. Carly Schroeder makes Gracie's passion and conviction appear strong but never forced. Despite the ending this is, for once, a sports film not so much about the dramatic play and the roar of the crowd as it is about practice, practice, practice. The training is as close up as we got in Robert Towne's excellent 1982 'Personal Best,' which starred Mariel Hemingway and was a landmark for its realistic cinematic treatment of a track and field competitor. Again, maybe inevitably, the lesbian issue comes up in 'Gracie' as it does more prominently in 'Personal Best.' This time it appears only as a false stereotype, but at one point even Gracie's very up-front best friend Jena (Julia Garro) has doubts, while her sometime boyfriend, Kyle Rhodes (Christopher Shand), who wanted her for a long time but seemed hard to trust, indeed becomes an enemy at tryout time.The movie's lessons have to do with a family unsure of itself accepting layers of grief, but the fresh image is of a young girl who can be a tough and skillful athlete no matter what anybody thinks. Gracie may get some of its depth and particularity from the involvement of the Shue family. It's a family affair in more ways than one. Director Guggenheim is Elizabeth Shue's husband, and Carly Schroeder's brother plays Gracie's younger brother Mike. The summer's American family films are rarely as unpretentious but solid as this one.