Tuesday 19 August 2008

No.31 : Wildcats (1986)



Wildcats at the IMDb

Goldie Hawn stars in this formulaic sorts comedy/drama which sees a woman try to overcome the usual hurdles of sexism and prejudice to lead a team of misfits to an American football championship.

The titles include a helpful photo montage of Goldie growing up so we know she’s a football genius even if all those stupid men can’t see her potential. When the school coach retires Goldie asks for the job only to be denied by the douche bag Head who’d rather have the gay home economics teacher take over than a woman. Goldie is indignant and agrees to switch jobs to a scummier school with an even worse team to show them she’s got the goods.


Predictably she finds acceptance hard at the new school but manages to win their respect when she out runs the whole football team. With the team now on her side she has to juggle a custody case and the fragile egos of her charges if she’s to take the team to the championship game against, yes you’ve guessed it, the school that wouldn’t give her the job.

If you’ve seen any underdog sports film you’ve seen ‘Wildcats’. The formula of moulding a team of losers into greatness is such a cliché that you know the ending before ten minutes have passed. All the men are shown as boorish sexist pigs while Goldie is a superhuman mixture of great mum and ballsy coach. Her husband is an odious slime bag, and it of course begs the question of why she married him in the first place. The childcare resolution is so pat and unconvincing that his character must have had a brain transplant off screen if what’s offered is to be believed.




The team are the usual mixture of jocks and underachievers with debut performances coming from both Woody Harrison and Wesley Snipes, who manages to get his cock out for no good reason. It is strange that in an otherwise twee family film there are scenes of gratuitous nudity and swearing, seemingly shoe horned in for effect. Maybe they wanted a higher rating to get the blokes interested, but they shouldn’t have bothered - it just looked like they were trying too hard to be tough and edgy.

The game sequences were pretty poor with every score a field length pass and miracle catch, and the scoring predictable - our guys are 14-0 down at half time, can they do it? Duh!



‘Wildcats’ isn’t a bad film really it’s just too safe and predictable to have any real merit. It does however get one extra point for having Goldie in the bath - Goldie by name and by nature it would seem!

Best Bit : Splish-splash she’s having a bath

‘W’ Score 13/23

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