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Gracie (2007)
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Reviews Counted:88
Fresh:52
Rotten:36
Average Rating:5.8/10
Consensus: Gracie can be rousing and touching in spots, but is ultimately undone by its predictable story arc and a lack of nuance.
Runtime: 2 hrs 35 mins
Genre: Dramas
Synopsis: Set in 1978, Gracie is an inspirational film about a teenage girl who overcomes the loss of her brother and fights the odds to achieve her dream of playing competitive soccer at a time when girls’... Set in 1978, Gracie is an inspirational film about a teenage girl who overcomes the loss of her brother and fights the odds to achieve her dream of playing competitive soccer at a time when girls’ soccer did not exist. Based on true events from the lives of the Shue family (producer and co-star Andrew Shue, Academy Award®-nominated actress Elisabeth Shue), the film is directed by Academy Award®-winning director Davis Guggenheim (An Inconvenient Truth), who happens to be part of the family as well, being married to Elisabeth Shue. The film also features a terrific 1970's soundtrack including classic songs from Boston, Blondie, Aretha Franklin, and the Boss, Bruce Springsteen. Living in South Orange New Jersey, 15 year old Gracie Bowen (Carly Schroeder) is the only girl in a family of three brothers. Their family life revolves almost entirely around soccer: her father (Dermot Mulroney) and brothers are obsessed with the sport, practicing in the backyard's makeshift field every day from morning ‘til night. Tragedy unexpectedly strikes when Gracie's older brother Johnny (Jesse Lee Soffer), star of the high school varsity soccer team and Gracie's only protector, is killed in a car accident. Struggling with grief over her family's loss, Gracie decides to fill the void left on her brother's team by petitioning the school board to allow her to play on the boy's high school varsity soccer team in his place. Her father, a former soccer star himself, tries to prove to Gracie that she is not tough enough or talented enough to play with boys. Her mother, Lindsey Bowen (Elisabeth Shue) already an outsider in the sports-obsessed family, is no help either. Undeterred, Gracie finds reserves of strength she never knew existed, and persists in changing everyone's beliefs in what she is capable of, including her own. Gracie not only forces her father to wake up from his grief and see her as the beautiful and strong person that she has always been but she also brings her family together in the face of their tragedy. -- © Picturehouse [More]
Starring: Carly Schroeder, Dermot Mulroney, Elisabeth Shue, Andrew Shue
Starring: Carly Schroeder, Dermot Mulroney, Elisabeth Shue, Andrew Shue, Julia Garro, Jay Patterson, Christopher Shand, Jesse Lee, Jack Walker
Director: Davis Guggenheim
Director: Davis Guggenheim
Screenwriter: Karen Janszen, Lisa Marie Peterson
Producer: Davis Guggenheim, Andrew Shue, Elisabeth Shue, Lemore Syvan
Composer: Mark Isham
Studio: Picturehouse
Reviews for Gracie
Gracie, a tale about a teen girl blazing trails in soccer, is worthy, but it's also formulaic to a fault.
Gracie is painfully earnest, which might be OK were it not also painfully trite, painfully cliched and painfully formulaic.
If you competed in high school athletics, you might be able to overlook that Gracie is just another formulaic, if well-intentioned, sports movie.
It's too bad that Gracie's story seems bent on staying on the surface of such familiar turf, rather than digging deeper to reveal what propels her.
It's a trite, indifferently told underdog sports story that could only have been redeemed by perfect execution.
For all the heartfelt emotion behind it, the movie plays out like your basic after-school special: no surprises, no suspense.
Lindsay suggests -- during the inevitable mother-daughter heart-to-heart -- that Gracie persist despite the many odds because Lindsay did not.
Gracie's only achievement is technical, yet it has nothing to do with creative merit: Prints for the film, Davis Guggenheim's first feature-length fiction, will be carbon neutral.
A nicely confident Schroeder strides though the movie as if it's a masterpiece, and Mulroney is equally charismatic. But they can't quite save Gracie from feeling like a vanity project.
As labors of love go, this one is harmless enough. It's just not particularly elegant or well-crafted, or even inspiring, to be worth seeking out.
While doing fine work otherwise, Carly Schroeder is never able to elevate the athletics of the role to make us believe the guys aren't taking it easy on her.
Not a terrible movie...but it's awfully familiar--so much so that it probably should have been called Trudy.
The movie tries a little too hard to weave in wholesome messages about how athletics can keep kids out of trouble.
The genuine sense of loss and nicely observed family details don't stand a chance against the generic buildup to the big game.
Gracie is painless enough and, at times, even enjoyable. But it suffers from an overriding feeling that this would be better positioned as a made-for-TV feature.
Unfortunately, this is one of those times when keeping a family scrapbook would have been far more effective.
Only auds not exposed to similar inspirational sports scenarios will doubt for a second that she'll eventually succeed.
Gracie is no failure, but its mishmash of sports tropes and melodrama doesn't satisfy the way it could have.
Latest News for Gracie
September 20, 2007:
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June 03, 2007:
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May 31, 2007:
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May 31, 2007:
Critical Consensus: "Knocked Up" Is A Knockout; "Mr. Brooks," "Gracie" Less So
This week at the movies we've got matters of life ("Knocked Up," starring Katherine Heigl and Seth Rogen), death ("Mr. Brooks," starring Kevin Costner and... More...
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