Invincible (***)

? Think of this as a football version of Rocky, only true. Well, sort of, in Disney’s heavily fictionalized story of how Vince Papale (Mark Wahlberg), a down-on-his luck pickup-team player, unexpectedly wound up a 30-year old rookie on his local team, the hapless Philadelphia Eagles of the mid-1970s. Greg Kinnear plays the team’s new coach, Dick Vermeil, and Elizabeth Banks is a romantic interest.

+ Even if Papale’s NFL career was less unlikely than the film makes it seem (the real Papale had played two years in the flop World Football League), the only part of the movie that seemed probably false to me was how his marriage’s end and new romance is timed so coincidentally to his burgeoning football career. The best thing about the movie, though, is the way it evokes the spirit of 1970s Philadelphia at the time, for better or worse. The Veterans Stadium boo birds make multiple appearances, and scrappy working-class South Philly seems just about right, right down to the trash on the street and the nearby picket line. The idea is that the success of the underdog and local boy Papale gave some down-on-their luck people something to rally around. Yet it doesn’t push this theme too hard like, say, Remember the Titans, which I thought laid its “inspirational” message on pretty thick. Banks’s largely made-up role as the down-to-earth girlfriend is appealing and should propel her to greater fame. And BTO’s “Let It Ride” is one of the excellent choices as soundtrack music, a propulsive jock-rock hit that’s been forgotten enough that hearing it really brings back the period.

- Even given that the story is no mystery, the ending is pretty anti-climatic. Although Kinnear is a good Vermeil, the parts with the coach’s family don’t add much to the story. No doubt Vermeil’s life could make a good movie on its own, but what’s here is too insubstantial to amount to much.

= *** Another feel-good sports movie in the vein of The Rookie. Both movies are about modest sports heroes who learn confidence as they meet success. For non-sports fans, there are relatively few play scenes. A lot less corny that than it could have been, it’s inconsequential but entertaining.

IMDb link