It’s time for one of those emotional sport titles. Hoosiers does a good job of including a lot of the actual sports action. Sometimes these films focus more on the off the field drama but deep down we are here for the sports so it makes sense to really show that off. This movie is pretty well done all around with the only real weakness being the romance. That part definitely didn’t seem to be needed and was a bit on the rushed side but that’s how it goes sometimes.

The movie starts with a guy named Norman walking into a small town. He is here to coach the Basketball team and everyone is a bit wary of the guy. They don’t take kindly to new faces and this team has been pretty bad for a long time. It’s going to be hard to change everyone’s minds unless Norman can pull together a really big win streak. It’ll be tough though since the team’s best player Jimmy doesn’t play Basketball anymore and a fellow teacher Myra in insistent about leaving him alone. Can Norman defy the odds?

Okay so the town does look pretty bad here with how they are totally against Norman the whole time. It’s not like their team was already amazing or something. In the films where you have a new coach coming in to a championship then it’s a bit more understandable. In this case it’s not like they could get much worse so why give him such a hard time? Additionally they didn’t even have much of a plan so it would have just resulted in more losses. You half want Norman to just walk out of there since the town was being so resistant.

Props to Norman for sticking it out though. He’s not a perfect coach or anything either. The guy is stubborn to a fault and wants to make the team respect him even if it means losing a few games. And he’s not bluffing about that last part either so even when the team is losing because of his strategies, he will have them press on. At one point this even means fielding an incomplete team. If you let someone get away with breaking the rules then everyone will, so he had to make some really tough choices there.

As for the romance, well Myra can’t stand Norman initially. Right from the start she attacks him for his age and then never lets up for the rest of the movie. Due in part to that and how much older he looked than her, I was expecting a father type relationship here. She would gradually respect him and then things would work out from there. Instead that didn’t even come close to being the case and the inevitable romantic ending just didn’t make sense here. The tone shift happens way too quickly for it to be believable so this would have been better in a trilogy or something like that.

Meanwhile for Myra, I appreciate her looking out for Jimmy but it does feel like she starts several fights for no reason. She basically went in assuming that Norman would be a bad guy and never even let the guy try to make a case for himself. It’s good that she ended up changing her tune later on but it does make her appear unreasonable right from the jump. As for Jimmy, he was a good character all the way through. He made his own choices throughout the film and came in clutch when it counted.

One character who did not step up quick enough was Shooter. He starts out as being an unreliable drunk and even as he improves, he also relapses at one point. It was definitely a disappointing outcome for him since I was hoping that he would really improve. You can’t relapse on the main stage and embarrass everybody. It’s true that Norman threw him into too big of a situation right away but at the same time, he still should have been able to come out on top there. Particularly with the stakes being as high as they were.

The film is at its best when it is focused on the sports and less on the drama though. I enjoyed seeing the characters play ball as we see the various teams go at it. The practice drills were also solid and Norman’s experience definitely came through. While his on the field skills may have been lacking at times like with how easily he would be thrown out of the game but the team was definitely in way better shape than they were before he started.

It’s hard to say how good Norman was as a general teacher because surprisingly they didn’t really show that at all. It is mentioned how he has to teach two subjects as part of the contract but I guess that wasn’t seen as a big deal to the core story. It could have been an interesting subplot but it was not needed so I’m cool with it being left to the side. I imagine that any further plots could end up getting in the way of the sport itself and that would not be a good bargain. At the end of the day the Basketball has to be enough to really win the day.

Overall, Hoosiers is a pretty inspirational story about how anyone can rise to the top with a good work ethic. It can be a bit cheesy about how they start wrecking everybody and the next best team is naturally playing dirty. It would make sense to have the other best team just also be a well oiled machine with talented players but you get the message they are going for. If you enjoy Basketball or just like a good story then you will probably enjoy this movie. It’s well executed and while the story itself may be pretty straight forward, you don’t really mind that since it keeps you entertained.

Overall 7/10