Harvard Beats Yale 29-29 (2008)

Sadly Over-hyped

Must See Movie...

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Add this one to the list of documentaries that I have absolutely no idea why this was so critically well-received. Unless you're a Harvard or Yale alum, I wouldn't know why anyone would enjoy this movie. The Yale and Harvard players are refreshingly humble, and I especially liked J.P. Goldsmith on the Yale side. But the coming attractions make it seem like references to Al Gore, Garry Trudeau, Meryl Streep and George W. Bush are significant in this movie. They're not. They're mentioned in passing as a side note. And the idea that there was a heavy discussion about what was going on at college campuses during the explosive year of 1968 in America is also exaggerated. All we saw was a classic Harvard/Yale football game with the players reminiscing about it. Nothing more. If you're looking for something deeper or even more entertaining, it's simply not there.

In the spectrum of potential audience size, Kevin Rafferty's moment by moment review of a 40+ year old Ivy League college football game must be close to the lowest end. Game footage from Harvard's television station accounts for somewhere between 3/5ths to 2/3rds of the documentary's run time with men in their late 50's talking about the game accounting for all of the remainder. Now it helps that one of these men was former Harvard offensive lineman and current movie legend Tommy Lee Jones who seems oddly somber and off put about having to discuss the game despite the fact that his team is Rocky Balboa to Yale's Apollo Creed. It also helps that some of the discussion involves future Presidents, Vice Presidents and other screen legends. Beyond the shine of celebrity, the proceedings also benefit from the darkness of war, specifically the Vietnam war and the coming together on a sports team of veterans of it with active protesters of it. However, women, residents outside the Northeast United States and those born after the Beatles broke up will struggle to find relevancy in this tale of an old football game. In short, see Rafferty's "Atomic Café" instead, an absorbing study of just how crazy the cold war got.

Saw this at T.I.F.F. last year. It takes about 20 minutes to get rolling as you become familiarized with the 'cast'. Surprisingly Tommy Jones is well down the list of interesting interviews. The context of the times and the great archive footage make this a must see for any football fan or for the Doonesbury culture of Ivy League academia. The quotes from the ex-players are often very funny. Director Rafferty was at the actual game but unlike his father and grandfather, not a Harvard football player. The director managed to get most of the key players in the game. Unfortunately Calvin Hill, the only black player on Harvard and perhaps the most successful in the NFL of those playing in that game declined to be interviewed. Still, this film is very entertaining, captivating and suspenseful (despite knowing the final score) with the final minutes of the game providing a fitting climax to the film.

This was about one of the most boring documentaries I can recall ever seeing. Despite being a Yale Grad during that vintage decade, I could barely muster enough interest to watch the entire film. I had hoped for more than a bunch of aging males reveling in their past football exploits. To be sure, the game was dramatic and close, quite obviously by the final score. Despite an occasional foray into other topical issues of the era, the seemingly endless mechanics recounted by team members from both sides left one wishing for more depth and intelligent commentary by those having attended such august universities. And to see one of the Yale team gloating over his attempts to injure a key player to get him out of the game only gave this viewer a sour taste in his mouth rather than any admiration for such macho antics. In addition, one of the key celebrity participants looked like he had come off a month long drunk, pitching comments like some sort of arrogant poseur. The final puzzle of the film was the title. Am I missing something? A tie is a tie. Games are all about points and you're not a winner unless you score more points than your opponent. Notwithstanding some cutesy philosophical point that the director Kevin Rafferty might be trying to make, the title seems to fall flat as any kind of sophisticated summation of the movie's content.