 Only a few weeks after Invincible another uplifting football movie arrives in theaters. The Gridiron Gang stars Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson, who actually played football before he became a wrestling star. Carrie Rickey in the Philadelphia Inquirer says that Johnson "is a charismatic presence. He handles the nonverbal quotient of his assignment with considerably more grace than he does the dialogue, which often lands with the thud of an incomplete pass." Wesley Morris in the Boston Globe writes of Johnson: "His masculine sensitivity holds the film together." But Michael Wilmington in the Chicago Tribune observes that even though the film is based on a true story, it's "as formula-bound as they get." He concludes: "The movie veers wildly from violent melodrama to comedy to sermonizing, becoming, in this tangle, yet another movie demonstration of how school sports and good coaches can level society's playing fields and give young athletes a sense of community and purpose." |
