Maybe Davis Guggenheim should just stick to documentaries.
The Academy Award-winning director of An Inconvenient Truth attempts to step outside the career he has developed in television and documentary film with Gracie, an inspirational drama. Guggenheim’s film, however, is too formulaic and predictable, and the end result is an uninteresting piece that fails to inspire or entertain.
Set in South Orange, N.J. in 1978, Gracie is the story of Gracie Bowen (Carly Schroeder, Firewall), a 15-year-old girl who grows up an outsider within her own family while her father (Dermot Mulroney, Zodiac) obsesses over training her three brothers to be soccer players. All of this changes, though, when Gracie’s oldest brother Johnny (Jesse Lee Soffer, As the World Turns), the captain of the high school soccer team, dies in a tragic car accident. Frustrated with her brother’s death and her father’s apathetic attitude toward her, Gracie vows to honor her brother by taking his place on the varsity boys’ soccer team.
Although the story, which is based on the personal experiences of siblings Elisabeth and Andrew Shue (who serve as producers for the film and also act in supporting roles) is a heart-warming tale, it fails to translate well on screen. Karen Janszen’s and Lisa Marie Petersen’s screenplay seems to follow the basic formula for constructing an inspiring drama – and the end product simply disappoints.
Gracie’s first flaw is a conventional and predictable plot that fails to deliver any kind of surprises for the audience. The lack of creativity in the narrative seems most evident during one of the central scenes when Gracie begins her soccer training, as the entire sequence feels just like a training montage ripped straight out of the Rocky series.
The bland plot, however, is just the beginning of the film’s problems. Many of the story’s characters are simply stereotypical figures who lack depth and development, with Gracie’s oppressive boyfriend (Christopher Shand, Return To Sleepaway Camp) being the most prominent of these. Another glaring problem with the story line is how Gracie’s two younger brothers and grandfather are introduced early in the narrative, but have very little relevance to the plot. This issue simply makes them superfluous characters that should have either been developed more or cut from the story completely.
The film’s dialogue is yet another weakness, as much of the script is simply too poorly written to be convincing (a conversation between Gracie and her mother about how life is just a “shit sandwich” comes to mind). This problem has an effect on the cast, as Schroeder, in particular, struggles with the weak script and ends up delivering a forced – not emotionally touching – performance.
Gracie is not all flaws, however; a couple of elements were implemented successfully. The film’s soccer sequences are quite realistic and convincing, something that can be attributed to the film’s producer, Andrew Shue, a former Major League Soccer player for the Los Angeles Galaxy. Also, the scene portraying Johnny’s death is perfectly executed, with blurry imagery and overlapping sounds that capture the feeling of chaos that would surround such a tragic event. The good moments, however, only come across as positive distractions from the mess that is the rest of the film.
Because Gracie is being promoted as the new movie from “Academy Award-winning director Davis Guggenheim,” many people will probably attend the film with high expectations. Unfortunately, Guggenheim’s Oscar was for An Inconvenient Truth, and he seems to handle the direction of Al Gore giving a PowerPoint presentation much better than he does that of a film with an actual script and cast.
Contact reporter Thomas Floyd at diversions@dbk.umd.edu.
