The folksy charm that once glowed like a halo around Kevin Costner has curdled over time into something harsh. Now, both in public and in film, he’s appeared grouchier and more cantankerous. Costner’s cinematic transition into a grump is fully realized in Disney’s late-winter family picture McFarland, USA. Costner’s omnipresent frowny face is especially out of place in this would-be inspirational sports drama, which tells the story of an unlikely team of Latino teenagers in California who form their underfunded school’s first cross-country running team. Their surprising success story should be enough to propel the film, but the focus lies squarely on White Savior—ahem—Coach Jim White, Costner’s cranky but secretly wise coach who simply learns to embrace a new society along the way to righteous victory.
From the onset of McFarland, USA, Costner plays his incorrigible character less like a modern Gary Cooper and more like a new Archie Bunker. After a rushed and shaky prologue in which Coach White injures his football team’s loutish captain in Boise, Idaho, he accepts a teaching gig in McFarland—a small, predominantly Latino town near Bakersfield. Although White, his wife (an embarrassingly underused Maria Bello), and his daughters are initially unimpressed by their new digs and mildly confused by the culture (”You got burgers?” is his reply at the local taqueria), White has no other job options at the moment due to his history of mild insubordination at other schools. White faces resistance as the new assistant football coach, but is inspired when he discovers how the speed of some of the bored kids in his PE class and decides to start up a running team.
Because this is a Disney-certified sports movie (and based on a true story, natch), there aren’t many obstacles for the kids to overcome–poverty is mentioned, but never explored in-depth–or that can’t be processed through White’s mind as simple roadblocks to be defeated with a well-meaning pep talk. There’s an easy, and cinematically lazy, way to explain the know-nothing attitude evinced by White (a name that proves awfully apt) and his family. McFarland, USA is set in the fall of 1987, a time before white people may have known what a quinceanera is, or the working conditions of those who farm produce and must go out at 4:30am to pick it. But, from a contemporary perspective, it’s impossible to watch scenes where White joins a few of his students at their extracurricular job, and is unable to keep up with their pace. It’s equally difficult to swallow the scene where White sheepishly explains to his daughter that they have to dance at her impromptu and slightly belated Latino-style birthday party. The filmmakers merely focus on White learning how to bond with people of color as opposed to exploring the actual lives of those people of color. Director Niki Caro (a long way from Whale Rider, sadly) is fairly anonymous behind the camera; it’s only in the cinematography, by Adam Arkapaw of True Detective fame, that the story ever comes alive.
The manner in which running is depicted, specifically in the team’s fastest runner, Thomas (Carlos Pratts), is so successful that the film briefly achieves a sense of breathlessness. But then, it cuts back to White, whose weathered features belie a squint that appears to communicate a sense of bafflement at why Costner’s even in this movie. The kids who portray the members of McFarland’s running team do well with the meager material they’re given, as only Pratts is given something remotely close to weighty material with which to work. But even his subplot, where he grapples with his roots and a temperamental father, is dealt with too briefly. McFarland, USA, if only based on its updated title (the “USA” was added in the last few months, after its release was delayed), wishes to be a kind of all-embracing story about the melting pot of the US and the American Dream. And no doubt, the basic idea of how this team came to prominence in the late-1980s and onwards into the new century is inherently heartwarming. But the execution of this story is as sloppy as the prologue, presuming that the audience will fill in the blanks of the gaps it’s chosen not to fill in. There’s no visual hint as to why Thomas’ father softens and acquiesces to his son’s dreams, or why White’s wife and family become so quickly excited by living in a place they, only weeks earlier, compared pejoratively to Mexico. There’s a fine story to tell about fractious race-based relationships being smoothed out somewhere in this film, but it has no idea or interest in tackling the issues head-on.
