McFarland (Niki Caro, 2015): USA

Reviewed by Magali Vautrin. Viewed at SBIFF 2015.

  McFarland was the movie projected for the Closing Night of the Santa Barbara Film Festival 2015. Directed by Niki Caro and staring Megan Saylor (Homeland), or also our favorite “Bodyguard” : Kevin Costner, which honored the festival of his presence at the screening. Caro also introduced us to the seven you inexperienced actors she directed in this movie:Carlos Pratts, Valente Rodriguez, Johnny Ortiz,Sergio Avelar,Hector Duran,Eric Shanor also Rafael Martinez , who also attended the screening. This Walt Disney Production movie is inspired by a true story that happened to Mcfarland high school in 1987.

After being fired from the high school he was working in , a physical education teacher, Jim White is hired in the McFarland highs school,a predominantly Latino high school.  There he will transforms a team of athletes into championship contenders.The P.E teacher, his wife and their two daughters will have to face the culture’s differences this new city is offering them.

I thought it was a very good Disney cliché movie, meaning that after the first fifteen minutes you totally guess the ending of the movie. The story itself was very interesting, I dont remember having seen a Disney movie dealing with the Latino discrimination and amalgam. I even cried … The audience seemed to have well replied, during the screening I heard numerous laughs and even applause.

Beside the story, the cinematography were good. Probably the totality of the outside shots were filmed during “Golden Hour” (before sunrise or sunset), which give the movie those warm colors and it really give the audience the feeling of being in the early 90’s. the editing was good and the slow motions of the young boys running in the field, amazing.

Finally, my last point would be about the over product placement of  the Coca-Cola brand. It was a bit too much, there were at least ten apparitions of the black bottle in this movie, but the main one was the sequence where Kevin Costner (as Jim White) interrupts his run, exhausted, he drinks a “fresh” a Coca-Cola, the scene last at least one minutes, it really seemed like an advertisement and it did chock me for a minute.