Customer Reviews

Crossing the Line

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I loved this movie. The acting was superb. The plot is about a former college basketball star, (female), who comes to coach in a town where there is a long tradition of winning on the basketball court. As is so often the case, the parents of the atheletes in this town are rude, self-centered jerks and they prove it whenever their team is on the court. This is a movie about character development being more important than winning. It's a film about children becoming parents to their parents. The movie illustrates that all kids need is one solid, sane adult role model in order to behave the way they should behave; even if their parents refuse to. Unfortunatly, there are some technical problems in both the audio and the video portions of this movie near the end. Some copies are only slightly effected but some copies are so messed up that they can't be viewed. So, ordering this wonderful movie does involve some risks. If the movie remains very low priced, it is probably worth the risk.

College basketball star Laura Mosbach (played by Terry Farrell) is hired as an assistant coach for a high school girls' basketball team that has been molded into a perennial powerhouse. The problem is that pretty much everyone associated with the school is a jerk. The parents push their children too hard, beginning when those children are in youth soccer. Parents mock others' children. Girls on the team are passed in school despite failing to do the work. The list goes on and on.

After the first game of the season, the coach is hospitalized, and Laura takes over. The team begins to lose, and the town shows its colors: crank calls, more abuse, and, ultimately, violence at basketball games.

Though the movie claims to be based on actual events, it comes across as cardboard, and I'm not sure that its message is all that positive (since the new coach apparently passes two students who cheated, despite league rules to the contrary). The characters have almost no depth and could have come from central stereotype casting. There's the overbearing father who videotapes every game, insults fellow parents, pushes his daughter too hard, and harasses the referees. (Actually, there are two like this.) There's the outgoing coach to whom winning is everything. And so it goes. I certainly don't deny that there are people like this, and, indeed, I've seen them. But the portrayals here are one-note portrayals and make for a rather pedestrian made-for-TV movie.

As a coaching educator and sport sociologist, in my opinion this video gives the viewer an in-depth examination of the issues and challenges facing a novice coach who inherits a high school girls' basketball team from a local "legend." The teacher-coach faces a small-town populace obsessed with winning (at almost all costs), poor sportsmanship, athletes who display hubris, an eating disorder,a sense of entitlement, parental over-involvement, and lack of respect for the coach's efforts, and many other issues. Very instructive film.