The Mighty Macs

The year is 1971, and the setting is the small but beautiful campus of Pennsylvania's Immaculata College, a Catholic school for women. Low donor support has the administration struggling to keep the doors open for its 400 students; the priest overseeing the college (Malachy McCourt) warns its Mother Superior (Academy Award winner Ellen Burstyn) that it will take "an act of God" to save the school.

When an ambitious 22-year-old named Cathy Rush (Carla Gugino) is hired to be the school's basketball coach (by virtue of being the only applicant for the position), no one on campus recognizes her as the answer to the school's prayers. Sports are considered little more than a way to keep young women out of trouble, and Rush soon discovers that the gym has burned down and there are no plans to replace it. Working with no facilities, no administrative support, and barely enough players for a team, the rookie coach and her Mighty Macs will be lucky to survive the season's first game. But sometimes miracles do happen, and the Immaculata campus is as good a place as any.

Carla Gugino as Cathy Rush

This better-than-fiction story of Rush and her team's rise from obscurity to a national championship is perfect fodder for an Underdog Sports Movie, and that's what writer-director Tim Chambers aims to deliver. Unfortunately, the film has more mixed results than the team it chronicles, due chiefly to a dialogue and speech-heavy script that is too self-consciously aware of all the Big Themes it wants to explore.

Before the 1971-72 season, no national championship existed in women's basketball, despite the success of men's NCAA tournament. Part way through her inaugural season, Rush and her team discover that the recently founded AIWA (Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women) is planning a championship tournament, placing their story at a flashpoint in the history of women's athletics in particular and women's rights in general. When the film depicts The Mighty Macs arriving at the inaugural tournament in the only uniforms available to them—belted tunics with bloomers underneath—it captures an historic moment of transition in a funny and striking way.

Ellen Burstyn as Mother St. John

No less compelling are the personal stories of the coach, her team, and the surrounding personalities at the school. As a young woman who has completed her education, Rush is expected to settle down into her child-rearing years and give up her passion for basketball. Even her NBA referee husband, Ed (Bones' David Boreanaz), can't really understand her desire to pursue a coaching career. But Cathy is driven—partly by some ideas she has about the women's movement, but mostly by her love of sport—to give coaching a serious try. And the people around her—be they the student athletes she coaches or the bemused nuns who have never really been exposed to serious athletics before—can't help but be swept up in her determination and passion.

The cast members of The Mighty Macs do all they can to capture the large personalities that fuel this story. Gugino (best known for family fare like Spy Kids, Night at the Museum, and Race to Witch Mountain) brings likable warmth and convincing passion to the lead role, while Burstyn gives the harried but compassionate Mother St. John a satisfyingly multi-faceted complexity. Particularly compelling is Marley Shelton in the role of Sister Sunday, a young nun struggling with misgivings over her calling who becomes Rush's assistant coach and friend.

Marley Shelton as Sister Sunday

Unfortunately, the best efforts of the cast aren't enough to hide the clunky-ness of the film's talky, over-earnest script, which suffers from two major problems. First, it drowns the story and actors in clichéd exchanges and excruciating speeches that simply don't ring true. When Sister Sunday asks her Mother Superior why so much of life must be a struggle, the Mother answers that, "Without the struggle, we would not harvest the glory"—a line typical of the awkwardness of much of the dialogue. Rush is constantly launching into speeches—which range from abstract platitudes to more concrete object lessons that just don't seem to work. When trying to teach her team to have each other's backs, for example, an extended metaphor about being loyal by telling a particular teammate that she's wearing "street corner" lipstick feels more mean than illustrative.

The coaches prep the Macs for the big game

The second major problem with the script seems to be a desire to string together a series of iconic moments without the narrative development needed to connect and fully realize them. It's as if Chambers knows he wants to deliver certain scenes—a Remember the Titans-inspired moment where the Coach pushes the team too hard, only to have them rally, or a Hoosiers-esque revelation about the home life of a mysterious player—but he doesn't do the work necessary to make those scenes anything more than imitations of other movies. The players on the team are given so little character development (what scant information we're given is mostly delivered in sporadic and intrusive voice overs) that it's hard to keep them straight, so any plot points involving their personal lives simply fall flat. And a moment of reconciliation between Cathy and her sometimes-estranged husband comes so out of the blue that its potency and poignancy is lost.

There are some great bits in The Mighty Macs, particularly in more grounded scenes illustrating the friendship between Cathy and Sister Sunday, like the moment when the out-of-habit nun tells a would-be suitor that her fella is a "carpenter." And there is no denying that the story itself is fascinating: Almost 30 years after her unheralded arrival onto the struggling campus, Cathy Rush was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, and sportscasters were referring to Immaculata College as "the birthplace of women's college basketball." It's just a shame that a movie that should have been a slam-dunk feels more like a missed shot from the free throw line.

Talk About It

1. When the Monsignor of the college said it would take an "act of God" to keep the school open, did you get a sense he believed that God would intervene? Have you ever seen situations in which religious institutions forget to be prayerful about their "business?"
2. Cathy felt driven to coach the team despite her husband's disapproval. Was she right to proceed? What should one spouse do if the other spouse disapproves of something deeply important to him or her?
3. What role do sports play in the development of young adults? When is involvement in sports positive? When is it negative?

The Family Corner

The Mighty Macs is rated G and contains no swearing, violence, or sexuality, other than some subtle innuendo. Some of the Catholic characters in this movie have faith, and others don't, and the filmmakers treat their spirituality respectfully and realistically.

Photos © Freestyle Releasing

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