McFarland, USA

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Niki Caro/Starring: Kevin Costner, Maria Bello, Carlos Pratts, Morgan Saylor, Johnny Ortiz, Hector Duran, Rafael Martinez, Ramiro Rodriguez and Diana Maria Riva

Director Niki Caro, best known for her film Whale Rider, is back with McFarland, USA. Whether the film can be called Caro's or Disney's is a question not easily answered.

The film does have Disney written all over it. In recent years, the company has assumed ownership of the weepy sports-movie genre and has done well with it. Last year's Million Dollar Arm fell into this category and proved to be quite entertaining. I can say the same for Caro's film, which, like last year's Disney sports flick, also features minority athletes overcoming reduced economic status, racism and their own lack of cultural self-esteem to not only succeed but excel. Both films are also based on real people and events and though tethered to reality, they also share the Disney sports film formulae that even an accomplished director like Caro can't overcome or evade. Somehow that isn't necessarily a bad thing. Though much of McFarland USA is highly predictable (in spite of being a true story), it manages to be charming and entertaining.

Of course it helps to have an actor with Kevin Costner's charisma and sports film credibility. Costner, who just turned 60 in January, is still a powerful and welcome presence in films; even in a factory product like this late-winter movie offering. It also doesn't hurt to have Maria Bello; an actress who always seems real and can make the most of even the wispiest of roles.

Set in 1987, Costner plays real-life Jim White, a football coach who has been dismissed from several high school coaching jobs due to differences with administrators and colleagues. His latest transgression involves throwing a shoe at a player during a halftime pep talk after the individual dissed White repeatedly. The incident leads to his dismissal from his job and the uprooting of his family; a situation they find too familiar and too exasperating.

White, his wife Cheryl (Maria Bello) and his two daughters; Julie (Morgan Saylor) and Jamie (Elsie Fisher), find themselves in the small farming community of McFarland, California. When they arrive, they see the population is made up of mainly Mexican-Americans. They also find their home is a shabby place in a shabby neighborhood where poverty is the norm.

Put off a little at first with their new digs and surroundings, the family decides to venture out for dinner; settling on a taco place where the menu is something to which they are unaccustomed. When the family leaves the restaurant after dinner, they see a column of low-riders approaching, which immediately sets them on edge. When one of the riders accosts the family, another rider intervenes, thus averting a confrontation. In time, White learns he may have misconstrued the incident. Feeling unwelcome in the town, the family barely suppress their eagerness to leave.

White's new coaching position is also fraught with discord as he and the incumbent head coach butt heads. An incident involving White preventing a concussed player from entering a game sets him at odds with the head coach and becomes another threat to White's troubled career.

Unhappy with his position as coach and faced with the possibility of uprooting his family again, White finds he has few options.

While observing his student's running prowess, particularly one named Thomas Valles (Carlos Pratt), White conceives the idea of forming a school cross country team in spite of never having coached the sport.

Granted approval to start a team, White finds the sport a tough sell to the students he hopes to recruit. The fact that most rise as early as 4 a.m. to work in the fields then attend school during the day, only to return to the fields after school, presents a major obstacle. He eventually forms a team--made up of all Mexican-Americans--who are all a little skeptical of White's venture. Though eager to pursue his goal, White recognizes the plight of the families in the farming community and how their condition keeps them bound to the fields, making it difficult for them to to free themselves from an inextricable economic holding pattern. To help remedy the problem, he hands out SAT booklets to his athletes, emphasizing their potential to attend college.

It becomes fairly clear where this story will lead. We know White and his family will embrace the local culture and become part of the community; even sharing some of its rituals. And of course we know what will happen with the cross-country team.

I give Disney credit for exploring the culture of the community and the families themselves. We see Valles' family contends with a fatherless home and they, like many other families in McFarland, have family members who have been in and out of jail, whose sad proximity to the school is a sobering fact.

Of course what Disney film would ignore its sacrosanct view of family? We see the critical role of family in the community but White comes to learn something about his own obligations to his wife and daughters when he forgets the cake for Julie's 15th birthday party. To make amends, he enlists the help of townsfolk and borrows one of their rites of passage to fete the occasion.

But the focus of the film is White's team and how they emerge from nothingness to become a state power, which is great fun to watch, especially since it is real.
Adding a wrinkle to the drama is the offer White receives to coach at an upscale school in Palo Alto after his team begins to ascend the ranks of the state's elite cross-country teams.

As I mentioned earlier, I liked the movie. It doesn't make any profound, artistic statement but it entertains. If that seems like a rickety rack on which to rest one's coat, then consider the other multiplex offerings of late. If McFarland, USA traffics in cliches, it also does so with considerable heart and it tells it with a relatively modest $17 million dollar budget. 50 Shades of Grey was a snoozer at more than twice that and refuse like Jupiter Ascending couldn't even approach mediocrity with a $175 million dollar price-tag.

There aren't many surprises in the film but you may not care. It tells a story worth telling and one that says something about a place one wouldn't expect to find in a country with the world's leading economy; somewhere where even a minimum wage job seems like a fantasy. I hope McFarland's fortunes have changed significantly since 1987. I'm glad a corporate behemoth like Disney has the guts to tell such a story.

New Zealander Niki Caro has proven she has a deft touch with cultures not her own. Her Whale Rider focused on the Maori culture and in North Country, she addressed the sociopolitical climate of a working class community in Minnesota. Here again she shows sensitivity and insight into another culture.

I left the theater feeling quite satisfied. I wasn't in the presence of masterful cinema but I was entertained, which in the much-maligned Season of Swill, constitutes a small miracle.