'Mighty Macs' loses points for sports film cliches

"The Mighty Macs" tells an extremely inspirational story, yet tells it in a most uninspirational way.

I suppose people who like underdog sports movies to be surprise-deprived replicas of other underdog sports movies they've already seen might be inclined to like this fact-based drama.

It's based on the Mighty Macs, the women's basketball team from tiny Immaculata College in Philadelphia. It won the first national collegiate women's basketball championship in 1972. (Oops! Did I give away the ending?)

Writer/director/producer Tim Chambers denies no underdog sports drama cliché full employment in his movie.

The virtuous, sacrificing, maverick coach constantly shouts motivational bromides. "Have the courage to follow your dreams!" she exhorts her players.

Her generic team of struggling students rises above personal problems to participate in something bigger than themselves, and find themselves along the way.

The wary head schoolmaster (here the mother superior), originally suspect of the new coach's unorthodox practices, in an eye blink falls into line as her fiercest backer.

And we're treated to the usual lifeless, obligatory slow motion sports shots and freeze frames, along with the happiest group of supportive nuns since "Sister Act."

Carla Gugino plays Cathy Rush, a young newlywed (married to NBA referee Ed Rush, played by David Boreanaz) who arrives at Immaculata College and takes a job coaching the basketball team, even though the gym burned down and the players have to find new places to practice all the time.

The Mother Superior (Ellen Burstyn, once the agnostic mother in another Catholic-themed movie "The Exorcist") doesn't trust the new coach, but since she was the only person willing to work for such a low wage ...

As the Mother Superior fights with the school board to keep Immaculata from being closed because of insufficient funding, Coach Rush recruits her team with a minimum of support and a maximum of heart.

Sister Sunday (Marley Shelton), a basketball player before she decided to become a nun, agrees to be Rush's assistant coach. She's cute and sassy, and responds to Rush's feminist philosophy that girls can do whatever boys can. Maybe better.

This is where "The Mighty Macs" redeems itself for its stale structure and pedestrian dialogue.

In church-based institutions of higher learning during the early 1970s, bra burning wasn't exactly encouraged.

Some Macs viewed diving for a basketball as unladylike conduct, before Coach Rush arrived on the campus, uttering chestnuts like "You need to break up with your ego!"

The best scene in "The Mighty Macs" takes place not on the basketball court, but in a student's room where Coach comforts a player whose dream was to marry her longtime boyfriend - only to be dumped before an important game. (Aren't they all?)

Coach gives her a pep talk about not defining yourself through relationships with men (a variation of the chats I've had with my own daughters) and pulls the girl back from the emotional abyss.

This movie has a wonderful message of independence for girls, and Gugino's performance as a coach confident enough to obtain results without insults and screaming emerges as the drama's major asset.

If only her dialogue could have been a little less laughable than "Our results won't change until our habits change!"

Does Chambers even know he wrote a nun pun in that sentence?

<b>“Mighty Macs” </b>

★ ★

Starring: Carla Gugino, Marley Shelton, Ellen Burstyn, Katie Hayek, David Boreanaz

Directed by: Tim Chambers

Other: A Freestyle Releasing release. Rated G. 95 minutes.