Mc Farland (Niki Caro, 2015): USA

Reviewed by Mimmi Karlsson. Viewed at Santa Barbara Film Festival 2015.

This was probably the most perfect movie to be the closing film for SBIFF 2015. The audience in the Arlington Theater was cheering, crying and laughing. The feeling is hard to explain but it was truly magic!

Disney delivered yet another amazing movie and I love how predicted it is after just 15 minutes. I also love how the movie shows love, fear, hope and motivation and I got so inspired to do what I love after watching it. This is just my type of movie because it is easy to watch but it’s still not boring.

McFarland, USA is a movie based on a true story about Jim White (Kevin Costner) who is a sports coach with a big temper. He gets fired from one job after another and finally moves his family to McFarland in California which is where the story takes place. Jim gets a job as an assistant football coach but realizes soon that the high school boys are so much better at cross country running than football. He starts up a cross country team and the boys compete with other teams. I’m sure you can predict what will happen already just from reading this paragraph, but there will be more to it than that!

The movie gets so powerful when showing how the boys won’t give up and are trying to balance their life with school, running, friends and helping their families out. There are not many people that I know of who get up at sunrise to go to work before school starts, and then go back to work afterward, plus, to get their sports into their schedules as well. It is amazing how hard they are working.

The movie is also very fun at many moments and I was laughing a lot through it. There is no Disney movie I don’t like and I am glad that I feel the same after watching this one. I recommend other people to see it because it is a real “feel-good” movie!