The Hoosiers team (screenwriter Angelo Pizzo and director Anspaugh) regroup for another inspirational sports tale and, surprisingly, again succeed more than they fail. This is the slightest of tales: Daniel E. “Rudy” Ruettiger (Astin) comes from a working class mill family that will stay working class. His father (Beatty) believes that to dream is to fail. Even though Rudy is slight of build with no physical ability and has never done well in school, his dream is to be a Notre Dame football player. This vision has nothing to do with academics or being the first in his family to go to college, it has to do with being a Notre Dame football player. Against all odds, he enters a junior college and begins to work towards his goal. Remarkably, Astin builds Rudy into an attractive character, and the film is littered with fine performances. Hoosiers is more a scrapbook of old photos with bits of anecdotes attached than a focused narrative built into a film about a town, a team, a coach, a woman and the wonderfully odd power of dreams. Rudy covers the same territory, it is a film about hope, a narrative aimed solely at achieving an ambition. Eventually, after making the team on the practice squad, Rudy’s desire narrows to just being able to suit up and go out on the field fueled for one game — the film feels like it should be about so much more. Still, in a real way, a dream is a dream, a state championship or 27 seconds on a football field. Our audience applauded at the end. If you resist the ride, this will come across as saccharine and obvious, but powered by Astin and fueled by such fine performers as Beatty, Prosky, Taylor and Dutton, the film works (of special note: Jon Favreau in the somewhat odious role of the graduate student who exchanges tutoring for meeting girls). Anspaugh’s got a habit of dropping out all ambient sound and bringing up the music at the end of mutely lit scenes as though he is turning pages at the end of a chapter. This is an affectionate movie, there are no real villains, no real heroes, just human difficulties and mundane triumphs.
This article appears in October 22 • 1993 (Cover).